I went for an adventure this afternoon in the hitherto unexplored region north west of Reading. Started in the pleasant village of Streatley and headed in the general direction of Swindon along the “ridgeway” national trail. At first it was a little dull and plodding, the only interesting site being this memorial to a solider killed in a 1947 accident:

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Things improved somewhat after I crossed the A34. Still, it felt a unusually empty and desolate for southern England.

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A while later I realised I was in the middle of nowhere with no obvious route back to civilisation. So I made a rapid detour via this rather ominous looking facility that I later discovered was the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

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Eventually, and with the help of a well timed bus, I made it to Didcot. Didcot is not Oxfordshire’s prettiest town by a long margin. But at least I saw a steam train while I was waiting for the train back home:

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