The Great Meander

This would be a great title for my autobiography, but it reers most immediately to today's walk, which lengthened pleasantly as I took it. It had been a long time, over a year I think, since I walked from Woodstock to Bladon, and certainly not since the sheep barns at the south-east corner of Blenheim, near the caravan site, began their conversion into offices for a property company. I'd planned vaguely to go up to the church at Bladon and turn round, but instead I forged on to Long Hanborough, investigated the railway station (and watched the coach acting as a eplacement bus service do a multi-point turn to get out of the station car park) and the new and slightly hyped Co-Op, or rather 'the cooperative' with its green logo and glass-and-wood barn structure. Then on up past Combe station (one train a day, and only if the train manager has been notified beforehand) and to the Combe gate of Blenheim Park. There were more pheasants than people in that corner of the park; I remember walking elsewhere in the park a few years ago and hearing gunshots from the woods. They seem timid and harmless birds; unlike the Canada geese who were blocking the path closer to home, who moved away sulkily as I approached, with a few standing guard over the retreat, flapping their wings, with one hissing.

The route through Blenheim Park isn't the most direct, as the public footpaths (though better signed than they used to be) are mainly based around access roads to the houses on the Blenheim estate with a few cuts through; and even then I found one route blocked by a thankfully low electric fence intended to keep sheep in. The immediate environs of the palace are marked by signs denying the public a right of way, as these are for ticket holders only, and as there were staff about monitoring those attending the horse trials I followed my natural instinct which is to respect such prohibitions.

Back home, I've finally succumbed to eBay and am (surprise) bidding for some old Doctor Who fanzines. The same seller has a Krynoid costume for sale too, but a spare £350 I do not have.