OS Explorer map 191, Banbury, Bicester & Chipping Norton: Brackley – I own this map, and had visited it before starting this blog. Visited again for this post 11th August 2023.
Google Maps location links: Banbury, the Rollright Stones, Moreton-in-Marsh, Bicester
Moving house!
I’ve mentioned a couple of times on the blog now that Vesper and I recently moved house from Cambridge, where I’ve lived for the past eight years, to Moreton-in-Marsh in Gloucestershire, at the northern end of the Cotswolds. Those mentions were me getting ahead of myself a little: I visited those places well before we moved, but was writing after the move and ended up mentioning it. Now, though, I’ve at last caught up to the move itself, in August 2023!
In Cambridge, the two of us lived with our dear friend Erithacus and her dear cat Truus, but we’d be alone in Moreton (though a cat or two will hopefully be joining our household soon!), so that was a big change. A couple of weeks prior, the three of us did a little farewell tour of Cambridge, visiting all the streets we’d lived on together in the past five years, and a few other favourite haunts.
The removal itself happened on Thursday 10th August, though the wider move was spread out over a week or so, as we made a few trips between homes old and new, to collect keys, do the move, and return for some final items and finish clearing out the old house. Our Cambridge house had also come furnished, rather inconveniently for us already owning our own furniture, so we’d ended up storing a lot of the landlord’s furniture at my parents’ house, which of course now had to come back. But still, it all went smoothly even if it made for a bit of a hectic week. Five months on, we’re nice and settled in, and enjoying our new surroundings!
Moreton is in map area OL45, which I’ve visited and posted about before, so I won’t do a post about our new home itself right now – though maybe I will come back and do a re-post of that map area, once we’ve lived here a bit longer. Instead, this post concerns the map area one to the west, which I visited several times in my first few months living in Moreton. Some of those times were, admittedly, much more boring than others, so don’t expect a solid ride of excitement for the rest of this post.
Banbury
I first stopped in this map area the very next day after our removal. It was a Friday, and I had the day off work to make a start on unpacking, but I did make one trip out. Our Moreton house is now the fifth post-university rented house I’ve lived in, and the third unfurnished one, but I can say conclusively that it’s the most unfurnished house I’ve moved in to: we knew we weren’t getting any furniture or white goods (fridge, washing machine etc.), but in a couple of rooms there weren’t yet any curtain rails – though there was a box of curtains in a cupboard. I still had my parents’ car that I’d borrowed for the move, so I made the half-hour drive over to Banbury, one of the nearer large towns, and bought some in their branch of Dunelm.
I also visited their Wilko, where I picked up some little tester pots of white paint, hoping to find a good match for the walls in the old house, which I could then use to paint over an area where I’d managed to pull some plaster off the wall while overzealously removing some command strips. Unfortunately, testing it out the next day when we headed back to Cambridge, none were a great match, and we ended up leaving it as is. Fortunately though, the landlord didn’t charge us for the damage, so all fine in the end!
I didn’t take any photos that day, but Vesper and I came back just a week or so later, on the 20th, for a spot more shopping, visiting Dunelm and Wilko again and picking up some drinking glasses, recycling bins, and a few other odds and ends. On that occasion, a Sunday, Banbury had its market on in the town centre, which was nice! I enjoyed central Banbury; it just seemed a nice, healthy town centre, with fairly pretty buildings, a nice selection of shops and so on.
Finally, I came back to Banbury alone another three weeks later, yet again to go to Wilko. Now, around this time, big news in the UK was that Wilko had financially collapsed, and their stores would likely be closing all over the place. On that previous trip with Vesper, we’d bought six drinking glasses, but regretted only getting that many: they were blue and yellow, a nice matching set which went well with the crockery set we’d asked my parents for for Christmas, but we’d be getting 10 place settings of the crockery, so didn’t have enough glasses. I headed back to Wilko in the hope of picking up some more glasses before they all closed, but alas! The shelves were almost completely empty, with just a few clearance items left. Oh well!
The Rollright Stones
A couple of months after those very mundane events, I did come back to the map area for something a bit more exciting: on 11th November, I had a visit from my old friend No Longer Hairy, and we went to take a look at the Rollright Stones, a stone circle a short drive from Moreton! I managed to forget my camera on that occasion so took no photos, but fortunately Vesper and I ended up going back and doing the same thing very next weekend, when friend Erithacus came over.
The Rollright Stones is a name for three stone things close by each other, specifically the lone King Stone, the King’s Men stone circle, and the Whispering Knights tomb. I enjoyed them a lot, they’re very cool!
The stone they’re made of is nothing like I’ve seen in stone circles before: the stones are very irregularly shaped, and have been weathered in a way that’s made lots of little holes across the surface; some burrowing deep into the stone, some all the way through to the other side. I had fun poking my fingers in!
Next to the Whispering Knights, there’s an area of woodland, which a sign showed was managed as part of the Whispering Knights Project, which was very pretty: there was a long maze inside that I walked on both visits, and the woods were full of different kinds of mushrooms growing all over the place.
Given how close to home it is, I expect the Stones may become a favourite spot to take visitors to. I look forward to it!
Previous visits
I’ve been to this map area at least once before, specifically visiting Bicester Village, a shopping centre whose thing is doing posh brands at lower prices, so attracts people from all over. Not really my thing, but I know I went on at least one occasion, in September 2011, when my parents and I took some visiting Malaysian relatives there, on the way back from a day trip to Oxford. I may have been with my parents more times than that, not sure!
Visiting all the maps! 