New friends – obscure sights – the group divides – clear and present danger – an accident of geography – interest in bridges
2026 has not been an easy one so far. Work challenges, family challenges and my frickin’ house flooding have combined to make everything a bit overwhelming
and hard to cope with.
So when we got a sunny Sunday, on a weekend in late April when (thanks to having found a long-term rental) we didn’t have to move between short-term lets, I cajoled Dan
into once again acting as my support driver so I could walk some more of the Thames Path.
Dan and the smaller child joined me for the first couple of miles from Abingdon, which was nice.
…
My partner Ruth’s mission to walk the entire length of the Thames Path1
continued recently, and I still love “going on on” her journey – even the parts I wasn’t present for – through her blog posts.
If you too might enjoy blog-spectating this slowest-possible-walk along the length of the River Thames, you can catch-up on the
backlog and subscribe for the next one, whenever that happens!
Footnotes
1 She’s doing the walk in many, tiny, and disparate instalments. By her own estimates
she’s achieving about 50 metres per day, when averaged over her entire effort. This makes her only marginally faster than the 40 metres per day of the faster parts of the Greenland
Ice Sheet, which I guess means that her progress is literally glacial in its speed.
For a while I was looking way too high, but in the end I caught a glimpse of this surprisingly well-concealed container.
And that’s the loop complete! Big thanks to the CO for setting this excellent trail spanning so many gorgeous footpaths, many of them new to me despite being relatively local!
Thanks for all the caches, and for a delightful Spring morning’s walk!
Hurrah! I just made my first successful submission to Curious Cones, a weblog collecting photographs of traffic cones spotted in unusual places.
I spotted this cone while the younger child and I took a walk to the next-nearest village to our temporary accommodation, in order to find a geocache, tag some benches for OpenBenches, and have a cafe brunch.
Anyway: if you’re not following Curious Cones, it’s exactly as delightful as you might expect.
As the UK’s heatwave continues, the dog and I were delighted that this morning was sufficiently overcast that we could manage a proper walk without completely melting.
Her breed copes badly with the heat and we’ve lately had to keep her indoors or in the shade more than she’d like, so a chance to run around among the trees was very welcome!
Saw GCB61ZC “Mossy” appear yesterday, but I’d already had an Easter Sunday beer or two and couldn’t drive out here… in fact, I
realised, I probably wasn’t in a state to cycle out here either and so I resolved that I’d come out the following morning – that is, today – by car and give the dog a walk while finding
GL1E5FYX0 and its year-older sibling GCAR5HV “Ivy”.
But early this morning the dog had been poorly and was still needing to relieve herself with little to no notice, so I didn’t want to risk putting her in the car! Though… I did want to
keep her outdoors! It was time for a change in plan: instead of driving to near the cache then taking a walk… we’d attempt the whole thing on foot, perhaps taking the opportunity to
explore some of the back footpaths that we’d not yet had a chance to try. We’d now missed
our chance for the FTF at “Mossy”, but we could still enjoy a walk (and hopefully give the dog a chance to feel better).
We cut through fields at Sutton, past The Fox and Blackditch Farm, to brush against the side of Lakeside Industrial Estate and head down Dix Pit. After a brief pause to report fly
tipping at 51.745311, -1.412871 (why would anybody fly tip literally just down the road from the recycling centre? it boggles my mind), we decided to duck off the road and take the
parallel public footpath for a bit (OSM Way #204829432, trailhead 51.742330, -1.416563).
To our surprise, the public footpath was fenced off. I thought we might instead be able to take the track to the West and intersect with the nearby bridleway (OSM Way #1129092587) but it was marked as private, so we continued down Dix Pit. How DOES one get to that bridleway, I wondered? Just
out of curiosity we tried to join it via the footpath (OSM Way #1129092588) at 51.737047, -1.412766, but it, too, lacked a
usable gate (and looked severely overgrown!), although the public footpath signs within the mess were still visible. I suspect that this public footpath has been long neglected by the
landowner and is quickly becoming lost to the world.
Instead, then, we passed Cutmill Farm and took the footpath through the woods that straddle the boundary line between Stanton Harcourt and Standlake, crossing the Windrush at a bridge
that seemed to serve as the meeting point for a great multitude of dog walkers. My geopup, who’s not always the friendliest with new dogs, enjoyed greeting a few of them while warily
watching the others.
We looped around Oxlease Lake in a clockwise direction, crossed Standlake Brook (the dog was very keen to get a drink of water, and in trying to do so made herself exceptionally muddy),
and began working our way up the long driveway past the swimmers and anglers and sailors assembling and preparing for their bank holiday activities. I recalled that I’d been up this way about a year ago to find GCAQJN1 “Hardwick park 1”: I got the FTF on that, but it proved to be a short-lived
cache, getting retired only three or four months later when park owners cut back the trees that had been its host. But I’d actually been here much earlier, too – over a decade ago –
long before I moved to the local area, to find the much-more long-lived GC1TPFY “Constellations 4”. Strange to hunt for
caches in places that I’ve walked past at least twice before, before those caches were hidden!
First up was “Mossy” (GCB61ZC). The dog – who was by now feeling herself again and happy to lead the way – struggled with the narrow kissing-gate to get onto the trail (she’s not so
bright and doesn’t understand that she needs to make room for me to join her before I can open the gate) but soon we were on the path. The hiding place leapt out at me and soon the
cache was in hand, the log signed (right behind Mad H@ter, whose Leafield series I was just attempting five days ago), and the cache returned to its hiding spot beneath its excellent
camoflage. I hope the container survives the winter rains!
Second was “Ivy” (GCAR5HV): a brief walk through the holiday park away (via a glance at the watersports centre, which by the looks of things have paddleboards for rent: I first tried
paddleboarding on the sea and figure it might be easier on a lake, so perhaps I’ll find an excuse to come down here and have a go at some point). The host was easy to find, but it took
some searching to put my hand on the container because I started at the “wrong” side. It looks like it’s had (unlogged?) maintenance done since BusyLittleGeo’s visit last week: the
cache was in perfect condition and the logbook was empty.
Now it was time to return home and give this happy (but mucky) dog a bath. We retraced our steps until Dix Pit, but then cut through the Devils’ Quoits and out through Hayfield Green to
return to Stanton Harcourt, and from there picked our way back through the fields at Sutton to return home.
Brought the kids up Knipe Scar with limited and challenging art materials (huge sheets of paper and thick marker pens) for a lesson in drawing what a landscape makes you feel, rather
than focusing on what you can actually see.
I’m in an extremely rural area and I needed a phone call with my lawyer about my recent redundancy. Phone signal was very bad, so I resolved to
climb a nearby hill and call him back.
“I’m at a crossroads,” I said, when I finally found enough bars to have a conversation with him.
“In your life?” he asked.
“I guess,” I replied, “But also, y’know, literally.”
The phone signal is so shit at this year’s 3Camp venue that I’ve had to climb a hill to take a call from a lawyer (whom I’m speaking to about my recent
redundancy). Nice to be outdoors, though!
A swift uphill scramble for my friend and fellow volunteer John and I, before dinner. We’re staying in a nearby farmhouse for a week of volunteer work, writing software to help charities. Beautiful view from the summit this evening! SL, TNLN, TFTC!
It wasn’t until I made time for myself to get out into the countryside near my home and take the dog for a walk that I realised how much stress I’d been putting myself under during my
team meetup, this week.
Istanbul was enjoyable and fascinating, and I love my team, but I always forget until after the fact how much a few days worth of city crowds can make me feel anxious and trapped.
It’s good to get a mile or two from the nearest other human and decompress!
