Tiddington, Shabbington and the River Thame

We'd had a late night, and a few drinks, at David's party so Sunday started somewhat slowly and without a plan for a walk. Rosie suggested that we should venture into Oxfordshire and devised a route starting at Tiddington, close to junction 7 of the M40. This feels like quite a long way away, but it actually only took us 20 minutes to get there - much less time than some of the Chiltern walks we think of as close to home.

Most of the route was on one of the three local 'Promoted Routes': the Oxfordshire Way, The Thame (not Thames!) Valley Walk and the Bernwood Forest Trail, with a section at the start across a golf course. Although it stayed dry, the sun didn't come out. That was a shame because the blackthorn was in flower and would have looked lovely with some light on it!

The signage of first part on first part of the walk was poor. The Oxfordshire Way signs were hard to see, faded and, in one case, upside-down. What's more, some of the stiles were wobbly and others very high. Both the signage and the stiles improved when we entered Buckinghamshire.

As Shabbington (great name!), we took a slight detour to avoid a field of cows with calves and soon were walking alongside the River Thame on way back to the car.

We were home by around 1:30 for a delicious lunch of sausages (left over from Friday evening) with mustard on spelt bread, followed by  leftover chocolate brownies that I'd made for Saturday's party.

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