Day 68 - Bruern Abbey

Fancy gardening on the wall
of Bruern Abbey Manor House

What does one do when one wakes up on a sunny and cool morning? Well, plan a long walk to places yet to have been traveled to! This morning was such a morning and since it was Sunday and therefore a day of rest (at least from work) we set out to explore an area near Kingham.  The reason we chose this walk was principally due to the fact that the buses do not run on Sundays in this part of the world, but the train does!  Kingham as you may recall from previous blogs is where we first settled when we arrived in the Cotswolds.  It is also only 7 or 8 minutes by train south of where we currently live.

Another tidbit about public transit on Sundays in this neck of the woods is that the trains may not run on schedule or at all for that matter (cancelled trains are not unusual on Sundays). But there can be a bright side. On Sundays, the railway ticket offices are closed in the smaller towns so you must purchase your tickets from the guard (conductor) on the train. However, when you travel short distances, the guard may not come by your seat before you must get out. In those circumstances you travel for free (of course, it is not an expensive ticket in any case). Such was the case for us as we exited onto the platform at Kingham.

Snorkel anyone?

Our circular walk would start in a familiar fashion by taking us up to Bedlington (where we had stayed an evening earlier in our adventure) at which point we joined the Oxfordshire Way footpath heading south. This path is 109 kilometres long starting in Bourton-on-the-Water and ending in Henley-on-Thames. It links the Heart of England Way with the Thames Path. We would only stay on it for about 2 kilometers, which was good because this part of the path was muddy and suffering from the previous day's rain, before we turned east along the d'Arcy Dalton Way towards one of our destinations for the day, Bruern Abbey.


Before I chat about the Abbey, I want to say a little about this path. The route is named after the late Col. W.P. d'Arcy Dalton who was a local advocate for maintaining public right-of-ways and one of the founding fathers of the Oxford Fieldpaths Society (only in this great country can you have such organizations). Similar in distance (107 kilometers) to the Oxfordshire Way, its route runs from Wormleighton Reservoir on the northern boundary of Oxfordshire with Warwickshire southerly to Waylands Smithy in Wiltshire. When the path nears the Abbey, it runs slightly east west.

Now onto the Abbey.  Well, when we got to the location on our map, we found ourselves in a very small village setting, and discovered that the Abbey exists in

Coach House across from the Abbey Manor House

name only as the site now is occupied by a very grand early 18th century country home owned by Baron Glendonbrook. It is said that the last remnants of the Abbey still form part of a large cottage adjacent to the home.

In some ways the village around the Manor House and the house itself reminded me of Downton Abbey. This site was indeed the location of an original Cistercian Abbey founded in 1147 by Nicholas Basset as a "daughter" monastery to the Waverly Abbey in Surrey.  Ironically the Waverly Abbey was located within walking distance of where we lived in Farnham when I taught in the U.K.  We had walked to that location on many occasions with friends and family (Remember that Chris?). The Bruern Abbey was only one of the many properties this Order maintained across the country. As was the case with all of these properties, Bruern was destroyed in October of 1536  by order of King Henry VIII.

Fore!!!!

We continued along the d'Arcy Dalton Way which at one point crosses the Wychwood Golf Club (Check out how green things still are on the course, I wanted to get out and play!) before it starts back up one of the Cotswold hills on its way north towards the village of Churchill. When we had previously stayed in Kingham, we had stopped here for lunch one day during the week.  The food was good then and today we were not disappointed!


Arriving during the middle of the Sunday roast serving, we found the pub to be very busy, but they were kind enough to find a spot for two muddy walkers near the bar. A pint of ale and servings of roast beef and roast pork, veggies galore and of course roast potatoes and Yorkshire pud were welcome additions to our day's adventure. 

After the meal it was downhill (I mean elevation wise) along a local footpath past Kingham and to the rail station for the trip home. The return to MiM was also free as the guard did not come before we got there. So with a few quid saved from not paying train fare we used it to by a freshly baked dessert for later that evening. We figured we deserved it as Ange's fitbit indicated we had trekked over 17 kilometers.  Needless to say sleep came early this day :)

Ale of the Day: Butcombe Rare Breed, Butcombe Brewery Ltd, Wrington, Bristol,