OS Explorer map 170, Abingdon, Wantage & Vale of White Horse: Wallingford & Faringdon – I do not own this map, and had not visited it before starting this blog. Visited for this post 1st January 2023.
Google Maps location links: Eynsham, Kingston Bagpuize, East Hanney, Wantage, Milton, Sutton Courtenay, Wallingford, Berinsfield
In summer 2023, Vesper and I moved house from Cambridge to Moreton-in-Marsh, in Gloucestershire. My previous post was about our trip to a Herefordshire holiday cottage half a year previously, between Christmas 2022 and New Year 2023, at which point we were yet undecided about where to move to, and I mentioned that on the way there, we had a nosy around Great Malvern in case we might want to move there. Well, on the way back from that trip, on New Year’s Day, we did a little more scouting, making a detour around various towns and villages in Oxfordshire. We weren’t looking to be exhaustive; that would take much more than the few hours we had, but we thought we could visit a few places to get a sense of the area, and of what kinds of towns and villages would be available to us while still having good bus connections into Oxford.
Our first stop for the day was in Eynsham, in the Oxford map area – which I’d naturally visited before, given that I lived there for three years. Eynsham was lovely, with lots of pretty buildings and a variety of shops in its cute village centre, and is particularly notable to me for the Abbey that once stood there: Eynsham Abbey’s founding abbot was Ælfrīc, who was the subject of my masters’ dissertation! (Details here.)
From Eynsham, we came southwards into this map area, driving through the joined villages of Kingston Bagpuize and Southmoor – a little underwhelming: no real village centre, on a busy main road, and some soulless housing estates – then West and East Hanney – very pretty, though the shop looked very small and the surrounding countryside was a rather boring flat expanse without even many trees – before stopping for lunch in Wantage. I liked the idea of Wantage since it’s right next to the Berkshire Downs and the Ridgeway: while it’s fairly distant from Oxford, at a 50-minute bus ride rather than 30, the surrounding countryside may be nicer. For some reason we weren’t expecting great things of Wantage town itself, but it was actually very nice: the town square where we parked up was characterful, with a good range of shops, and we appreciated the central place given to the statue of King Alfred, who was born here! We found some amusement in the idea that we might end up having to decide between Ælfrīc and Alfred…
We were tempted by a pub lunch in Wantage, as the King Alfred’s Head had a very enticing-looking leek-and-something pie on the menu, but we decided we’d rather press on with our day a little more quickly, so bought lunch at the town’s Subway, and drove five minutes up onto the ridge of the Berkshire Downs, to eat it looking at the view north into Oxfordshire.
After Wantage, we drove through the villages of Milton and Sutton Courtenay: both very nice, though the latter possibly a little too posh. Since we’d be renting, fanciness wouldn’t make much of an impact on price, but I am, perhaps unfairly, a little apprehensive about living somewhere where we might have too many judgemental upper-middle-class neighbours…
From there, we made our last substantial stop of the day in Wallingford, which turned out to be another nice, characterful market town, and at the edge of the Chilterns so in lovely countryside. We attempted to walk through the ruined castle, but it turned out we were on a sunken lane that went through the castle grounds without any opportunity to exit the lane, so we missed that! There was also a very cool-looking antiques “arcade” which I poked my nose into for far too little time.
From Wallingford, we got in the car to drive out of Oxfordshire, making a 2-minute detour only to drive around Berinsfield – ex-airbase, very grim – before heading to my parents’ house to collect our dear cat Truus, whom they’d been kindly catsitting for us, and then on home to Cambridge. A busy day!
Visiting all the maps! 