A lovely walk in the country - Oxford to Abingdon

My husband and I set off yesterday for a lovely walk in the countryside - a rather long one at that!

From Oxford, we headed south on Iffley Road on to Donnington Bridge.  From there we descended onto the Thames path, which took us all the way to the gorgeous town of Abingdon, 9.5 miles away!

Abingdon

It took us three hours, but we were laden with cashews and water and chocolate, and kept a good pace.

Once in Abingdon, which is a gorgeous town, we had a delicious lunch in a fantastic pub called The Brewery Tap, which had a great atmosphere, and delicious fish and chips!  An eton mess to share for dessert made sure we were sufficiently stuffed while walking around town and doing a bit of browsing.

Abingdon is one of the longest continually occupied towns in the UK, being occupied since the 600s!  It's a typical Anglo Saxon development with a big open town square.  It's name comes from it's Abbey, which is now mostly ruins. but beautiful ruins :)

The Ridgeway passes through the henge
at Avebury, which dwarfs Stonehenge!

Abingdon is full of charity shops, and I bagged myself a book by Christopher Hitchens and a little gingham top.  The husband bought himself a silver serving spoon with fruit impressions on it, because he said it was hideous and wonderful in equal measure.  We also found a great walking stick with leather strap and metal tip that had never been used, and was a great price at £5!  It served him well on our walk back!  Yes... we walked back!

Before we headed back we stopped at a nice tea shop for a cuppa, and I was pleased to be drinking tea that had been grown in Britain!  Rainy cold Britain, in the south in Cornwall at least, has enough sun and dry weather to actually have a tea plantation.  The company is called Tregothnan (sounds very Cornish!).

Today our legs are surprisingly painless for walking all 19 miles, which is making us confident enough to think about walking the Ridgeway, which is the ancient prehistoric highway that once connected Dorset to the Norfolk Coast.

While I'm not much of sports fiend, I do love walking in the countryside, learning about the land and the plants and animals, and appreciating the outdoors.  The UK has some beautiful trails and while it's not the rugged hiking that would take place back where I'm from, it has its own charm.  I imagine I'll be walking in the UK as long as my legs will carry me, and its probably impossible to exhaust all the choices of places to go for beautiful scenery.