Into Oxford

 

I hope my little tour of Oxford is not boring you as I stll have more to come yet of some of the places I visited.

This is the electric scooter park outside the Saïd Business School which is built where the old Rewley road LMS station used to be, the swing bridge in one of my previous posts took the trains here so I am stood where the old sattion would have been.

On the other-side of St Frideswide square is this building, the Royal Oxford Hotel though quite why Sainsburys Local is there I could not say other than the hotel needed the money

 Rewley road fire Station, I did think of haveing a look but there were a lot of budding Firement Sams running around from the look of all the pushchairs parked up outside. The place was in danger of closing but the powers to be saw sense

George Street looking towards the center, on the left is one of the electric busses the city runs. You don't hear then coming up behind you.

This is where Gloucester Green Bus station is, they will take you all over the place from here. The one with Tube on is the one for London

The old Fire Station, you saw where is moved to a few photos ago, this is now a community center and cafe

The old Odeon George Street was built in 1935-1936 as Ritz Cinema, replacing a former cinema built in 1912. It was renamed the ABC cinema in 1963, and renamed the Odeon George Street in 2000. The cinema closed permanently in January 2025, after decades of operation.I went to see Starwars here when it first came out. The place is due to be made into a aparthotel

 I will leave you with this view over Oxford taken from the Westgate Shopping Center terrace

Happy SkyWatch 

The Botley Road

 

More photos I took round Oxford on my Open Doors visit 

Bike park by the station If you get off the train when visiting the city not doubt you will not help noticing them

 

The Botley road one part most visitors don't really venture but I dare say they notice this lot going on, it's been shut for the last three years die to network rails incompetence. The photo shows it in the final stages before opening which it did the following week

 

 

 The footpath takes you along by the road, this is new

 

The original tunnel was smaller than this

This looks back the other way

The Botley road river bridge

 

Which goes over this river the Thames of Isis which ever you like , they are the same. I used to walk along the footpath by the river to get to Osney where I worked at Oxford Instruments which at the time was a small company

You will always see ducks around on the Thames

 The takes from the bridge looking towards Osney Lock. the building you see to the right used to be a power station

I will leave you with this photo of the old Botley road Rail bridge taken back in 2009 and shows the old footpath through the tunnel I might add trucks and the odd Double Decker bus got stuck under the bridge. the photo was take with a lot of photos around Oxford of places that have now gone so I will show them at a later date.

Happy SkyWatch 

Oxford Open Doors

 

Some of the places I visited on the Oxford Open Doors even 2026 which I will be showing you for the next few weeks

This was not the first place I went but I had wanted to visit again as it had bee restored

 

 

It's Rewley Road Swing bridge that goes over the Sheepwash Channel connecting the Oxford canal with the river Thames or Isis as it's called in Oxford 

It used to connect to the old LMS station or Rewley Road station 

Which was beyond the building you see near St Fridewides Square, I used to drive past it going to work each day for around ten tears

End on view of the bridge

Plaque gives a bit of info on it

Two me 5 minuets craning this around moving 85 tons, you nee to be fit to do that 

Sheepwash channel and the rail bridge in the distance is Sheepwash Bridge

Just as we were going a narrowboat came down the channel

Going on up to the River Thames

This was the spire of the church I was going to next taken from the Botley road near the first place I went.

Take Care 

Dark sunset

 

First of all one of the reasons I did not post last week was because I stupidly forgot to back up my photos and the SD card I Used as storage on my laptop failed big time. I did try a few things to retrieve the photos but in the end sent it off to a place to get them recovered which they managed to do. If I had not got them recovered I would have lost 8 months of work and most likely would have give up blogging. I now have the photos backed up and have changed storage method on my laptop. I might add it was a 500 gb SD car with about 400 on it and I would have lost around 40 gb of photos. I will have to be more careful and back up on a regular basis. These photos were taken the 3 September and were not on the card

The recreation ground in the morning

Evening I noticed a dark sky and had to get some photos, this looks south from the bathroom

Going round south east

West to the sunset

 

Back to the south with more fir tree

South east with the oak tree in the frame

 West with the sun gone

Happy SkyWatch

 

Giving it a Miss

 

Blogger does not seem to be bothered about sorting updating the reading list the so I wonder why I bother writing them, I'm giving it a miss till I see they have sorted it. Don't seem to stop the AI bots crawling over my blogs though.

 

Abingdon

 

A few photos I took in Abingdon the other week 

Looking downstream towards St Helens church

St Helen from West St Helens Street

 St Helen from St Helens Wharf

 This is St Helens Wharf

Ducks and geese on the slipway nearby

Back up the Thames to the bridge

Happy SkyWatch

Thames at Abingdon

 

Only one photo this week from my trip to Abingdon taken from wharf road looking towards the bridge.

Happy SkyWatch

Like a few other bloggers I cannot comment on other people’s blogs for some reason, not even my own. Hope it is sorted soon

St Mary Kentchurch

 

This week the Church Explorer visits St Mary Kentchurch which I passed on the way to Garway so stopped off on the way back unfortunately the church was locked so I took photos of the church and churchyard

 

Hanging around

 

 Finally managed tobget back to our caravan in Wales after all the heat for a couple of days

On the way in I noticed a sign saying BCC parking, I wondered what it meant and looked it up to find it was a paragliding competition 

 

 

High on the thermals

Floating on air

 Turning around

So my wife and I sat down outside after setting up our caravan and watched what was going on

The photos were taken with mu compact zoom so may be a little out of focus 

The parafoils were everywhere

all different colours 

High up on the thermals 

This guy just came into land

Sat floating around

Another coming into land

they turned one way then another

This guy landing had a group of kids running after him

Colours were really vibrant 

There were also a few hang gliders 

 This guy flew past landing in the field behind.

 

 Happy SkyWatch