Today's diary:

The start of The Oxfordshire Way is in the village of Bourton-on-the-Water. It is on the River Windrush. I took some photos of the ducks on the Windrush. Have a look at these photos by using the link to today's photos that is given above.

Bourton is also home to a model village whose publicity enters the world of recursion: it boasts that there's a replica of the model village in the model village (but doesn't go any further than that)!

The photos include one of the sign at the start of the Oxfordshire Way. I started walking at about 0930 having caught an untimetabled bus at 0855 from Moreton-in-Marsh. The first part of the walking involves walking through a Nature Reserve. There are some photos of the Reserve's signboards. And then it's to the village of Wyck Rissington. The main street through this village is so wide that they would need binoculars to see what the neighbours acrosss the road were doing. There's a hill to climb after Wyck Rissington, and there are good views back to the Windrush Valley.

And then to Gawcombe. This is a manor house set in wonderful grounds with very extensive woods and very varied trees. The only photo I took whilst there was of some fungus "growing" on a tree.

A few miles further on, the village of Bledington is reached. It's about 6M from the start and it had taken me about 3 hours to get there, and so I arrived at about 12.30pm. So, this is where I had lunch.

I went to The King's Head.

The pub is set on the village green which has quite a few ducks, but most were asleep. I took some photos of three of them.

At the pub there was a posh restuarant and so all the food was expensive. I had a roasted mediterranean vegetables salad with couscous which costs £7.95. I also had a pint of Hooky Bitter and a pint of North Cotswold Brewery's Genesis.

Even though this is The Oxfordshire Way, most of today's walking was in Gloucestershire: it was not until about 0.5M from Bledington (6.5M from Bourton) that the route enters Oxfordshire. The boundary is where the Oxfordshire Way has a junction with the road to Kingham (and to Kingham railway station).

From that junction, it's about 3K to Bruern Abbey. I've done this bit twice before, when, last year, I walked the D'Arcy Dalton Circular.

From Bruern Abbey, it's about 1.5M to Shipton, the end of today's walk.

En route, I met a 17 year old dog, that had recently won 1st prize by looking so much like their owner (who had dressed up to fufil this purpose). The dog was accompanied by the grandad of the owner.

At the end of the walk (in Shipton-under-Wychwood), I had a 30 minute wait for the 1555 bus for Oxford which was good timing really.

Near to the bus stop, I took a photo of the memorial to 17 people from Shipton who had perished when their boat (The Cospatrick), in which they were emigrating to New Zealand, caught fire. There are more details about the Cospatrick disaster here.