Abby Road

Last Saturday I needed to get out for a walk so decided that I would investigate one of the streets near where we live and see where it went, what it looked like and generally check it out.

I like this picture. The push pin is at the end of Abby Road and when I got to the end of the street, there was a sign saying that the path was closed. Well, i didn't even know there was a path there. So I walked back up the street, noticing differences in the houses.

At this point, the fronts of the houses changed for some reason. Even though they are still attached, they changed.

The sticking out bit for the front door suddenly disappeared and if you look at the next photo, the dormer window has disappeared (the dormer windows at the ones at the top on the sloping roof)

 

A bit further up the street there was a gap between the buildings, so I wandered through and came upon, you guess it, a path winding it's way along the river again. And there is it, you can see it in this map (I do like this program!!).

And you can see the path along the river !! When I came to the end of the alleyway, I saw this:

These are the famous English allotments. I didn't even know they were there. I hope this photo shows up on the blog. It is about 4 photos joined together which is why the funny edges.

Some lovely reflections in the water:

Some of the ramshackle buildings on someone's allotment:

My path along the river:

There were other people walking along as well. A man walking his dog. A woman with a child in a stroller. On the bridge, a man was contemplating the river. On the other side of the bridge, a group of young people were fishing.

They had fishing rods made from sticks. They were giggling and laughing and having a great time. I took this photo from a distance.

The other thing I spotted which will interest Australians were these critters.

For those of you who don't know, Australia only has black swans so many Australians would never have seen white ones.

This one found something interesting in amongst the embankment.

If you look closely at the earlier picture of the path, you can just see the swans in the distance.

Here's the map again, from above.

And here's the photo from the footbridge.

Damn, there's another bridge further down, and another path going under. Wait til I come back here and see what happens !!

I continued to wind my way down the path. Ducks bums

Flowers - daisies

There was a squirrel running through these trees and I was trying to catch him/her. Obviously I missed it, but did get the trees. One day I will get a proper photo of one of these little guys.

At this stage I was starting to get tired, and had no idea where the path came out so figured it was time to head back to an area I knew and knew how to get home. So I turned around and came back to the footbridge and the other path. I decided to go along the other path, and under the other footbridge, figuring I had a fair sense of where I was in relation to home.

Under the bridge I discovered these creatures.

 

It was so low that even I had to watch my head and a group of young people coming the other direction had to duck or they would have hit their heads.

Not a great photo, but does sort of give the idea.

When I came out, I had absolutely no idea where I was, and I hadn't brought my map. Damn!! I didn't really want to have to retrace my steps completely. It is always nice to go a different way home. Then I saw a sign to the railway station and I knew that once I found the station, I was almost home.

I did however, take one more wrong turn and spotted this:

This is the Oxford Canal I'm told. I've got no idea what the name of the waterway I'd been wandering is called. Maybe one day I will. In the meantime I will just have to hold my curiosity.

Map again. Where that pin is is about where I went under the bridge. It didn't feel that far as it looks in this map.

And this is where I ended up - Stable Close

I took a photo of the houses on Stable Close because they reminded me of where M&K lived when they lived in London.

That's all for now folks. I've really enjoyed putting in the maps this time.

Cheers

Madeleine

Friday, 24 October 2008