Football, Cricket and Camping

At the Culham Road ground Abingdon Town (yellow) were playing at home to Abingdon United (red). Bill Reynolds was there from BBC Radio Oxford. He expected this local derby would bring in the crowds, but said with disappointment "Looks like just one man and his dog."

Rather suprisingly Abingdon Town won 2-1. Abingdon United have just been promoted to the Southern League and Town ended last season near the bottom of the same Hellenic League Division. This game was a pre-season Charity Cup game.

Next door, Abingdon Vale Cricket Club were playing at home to Great Tew. The second cricket pitch serves as a temporary home to lots of campers from The Camping and Caravanning Club. This is an annual temporary thing during the summer holidays, and earns a few extra pennies. The football club had put up signs to encourage campers to drink at their bar, as well as having a carboot sale tomorrow (more extra pennies).

Here the Abingdon Vale team are leaving the pavillion to start fielding after the Tea break.

The caravans and camping vans in the background brought a few more spectators. It was not as warm as it has been.

At Old Trafford today, England beat Pakistan by an innings and 120 runs.

Corporate Fisheries

Abingdon Town Council owns the rights to fish on a five mile stretch of the Thames, and permits can be obtained from Old Abbey House. They were 50p a year for residents last time I heard, and free for under 12s.

The fish shown is one of many in the River Ock this morning, and over a foot long. This specimen was under a tree feeding in the rivers current, staying much to the same place and circling round occasionally.

There are many spots where people can choose to fish on the Thames. This is one of the most popular sports hereabouts, and supplies are available from Goffs on Bridge Street.

Central South News

The lead story on this evening's Central News was "Summer Sizzler." After another week of sunshine, the intrepid reporter visited some people who are having to work in this heat: an air conditioning company who are running low on stock, a laundrette, and hottest of all: A Blacksmith. Then we went back to the cool studio where Wesley said it would be too cold without a jacket.

Wesley Smith has been reporting and reading the news for the Central South region since ther studios first moved to Abingdon in 1989. He is a well known face . But his future is in doubt. He was the face of Central South News but will he be the face of the new Thames Valley News?

Before 1989 the local news came from a central region studio in Birmingham, and so events like the Abingdon bun throwing could get easily missed amongst big city stories. Then in 1989, the southern end of the Central region was given its own studio, costing £5M, and located in the Abingdon Business Park. Now after 17 years , ITV have decided that the area covered from the Abingdon studio (stretching from Winchester to Banbury and from Swindon to Bracknell) does not make geograpical sense.

The Maltings

This is the rear view of the Old Maltings building between the Vineyard and Waitrose. The building was converted in 1999 from Malt making to the Vale Housing Association offices.

Situated in the town centre, it is easy for tenants to reach.

The front door and surround is of the glossy white shiney kind with a lift for the disabled and a revolving door.

The Vale Housing Association owns and maintains over 5,000 properties, most of which it brought twelve years ago from the Vale of White Horse District Council. The association have built over 100 homes in the last year for rent or share ownership.

These are often part of larger private developments where the developer is required to allow a certain proportion of social housing.

This building alongside the Old Malthouse is only a few years old, and has been made to look like the building that stood there before. That building collapsed unfortunately during redevelopment.

Development continues to the rear of the Old Maltings building, at The Maltings. These appartments and houses are being promoted by Persimmon Homes with the slogan "Oxford commuters make an educated move to Abingdon."

They say "At Persimmon we recognise the importance of local history and the need for new buildings to sympathise with the existing environment."

Abits - July Update

The Abits (Abingdon Integrated Transport Strategy) newsletter circulated in the Town Crier for summer 2006 lists two things happening in July:
* Bridge Street Entry Signal
* Stratton Way Bus waiting facility

These pictures show the bus waiting facility. The first one is next to the Net and is concreting over a lot of the grass to the front of the Net.

And the second picture is directly over the road in front of the large BT building.

These will become stop over places for buses when Stratton Way becomes two-way.

St Helens Bells' Finale

A couple of the smaller bells were rung on Saturday, when the White's of Appleton Church Bellhangers van was outside.

On Monday all the St Helens bell ringers were up in the bell tower practising during the early evening.

Two of the bell ringers came out to listen. They explained that it should be quieter for the houses down below because of the way the bells are hung in relation to the louvre opening, but that the sound should now travel further.

They then hurried back inside to rejoin the practise.

10 New Bells were cast by the Whitechapel foundary and hung by Whites of Appleton. This is the first completely new full ring of 10 installed by this well known local firm.

The Sanctus bell is the one visible from outside.

The tenor bell is enscribed: Edgar Humfrey: 1870-1956 by whose benefaction this ring of bells was installed in the church of St Helens. Praise him upon the loud cymbals.

Then
yesterday
there was a Service
for the Dedication of the
new bells led by The Right
Rev'd Stephen Cottrell The
Bishop of Reading at 7 p.m
and the church was full to
bursting with Abingdonians
bellringers & friends of St
Helens and after the service
all the bellringers rung peals for
a full hour and all of it finished with a
glorious finale like the crescendo at the end of a
concert
.

Museum Closing for decoration

The Princess Royal is coming to Abingdon on September 15th, and English Heritage will redecorate the county hall before the royal visit.

This will involve putting up scaffolding within the large exhibition area (the former sessions hall).

There will be a museum closure from Monday 24th July to Friday 7th September. The museum are very glad to be having the work done, but the timing is not so good. Temporary exhibitions need to be arranged.

Spoil yourself rotten

The start of the shopping precinct, and above the building is this raised relief of two figures in elongated form like something from Coventry Cathedral. They were put there in late 60s to celebrate the new shopping precinct.

This picture was taken at about 6 AM. The caged van is there to pick up traders rubbish bags, and the ladies are out walking their poodles.

At 1 Bury Street is a fast moving fashion shop called New Look. In the window are posters to say "Spoil yourself rotten!" and "Treat yourself 10% off" and "Further reductions."

Baptism

This baby was there for a baptism at Trinity today.

At other churches this may be called a christening or a deication, but at Trinity it is a baptism. The bapismal family is made to feel the centre of the whole service.

Thames Swim reaches Abingdon

Lewis Gordon Pugh, 36, has been attempting to be the first person to swim the length of the Thames. The 203-mile journey began at the river's source in Kemble, Gloucestershire and will finish at Southend-on-Sea, Essex. He swam through Abingdon today passing St Helens Wharf at 16:40.

On his blog he says 'I feel today that a corner has been turned. After the difficulties of the weekend, I began to really recover on Sunday evening, and some strong swimming brought us from Sandford Lock to Abingdon after a 4k swim. We stopped to pick up supplies in Abingdon, I rested on the boat for two hours. Although we have put a stop to any media activity while I focus on my swimming, interest from passers by is very high and during the Abingdon stretch I spoke to quite a few people, met a walker who was walking the length of the Thames, as well as a swan-shaped pedalo that was trying to paddle from Lechlade to the sea, and stopped for several photographs with passers by.'

As I watched he changed his stroke from crawl to breast stroke passing where the Ock enters the Thames, then reverted to crawl at Margaret Brown's gardens.

Woolworths Before

This is the Pirates of the Caribbean display at the Abingdon Woolworths Store.

Tesco are reportedly thriving, while other traders like Woolworths find conditions more difficult. People are likely to buy the things they could get from Woolworths at Tesco while doing the food shopping: childrens clothing, light bulbs, DVDs, computer games, the washing-up bowl and mop.

The aisles in Tesco are wide, and in Woolworths the aisles are too narrow to let child buggies pass . Still Woolworths must do a fairly good trade particularly coming up to Christmas. But they didn't catch on to the recent world cup bonanza.

Yesterday, Woolworths closed their doors for ten days. Red crates were stacked up ready for the stock to be cleared away.

Here is the old sign with the missing letter H at the side of the shop - for old times sake. All the windows have been blanked out, and signs put up saying "Your fantastic new look WOOLWORTHS opens - Tuesday 1st August 10:00 AM". Woolworths are revamping 100 of their 600 stores this year.

In the States I read on Wikipedia that in 1997, F. W. Woolworth Company converted itself into a sporting retailer, closing its remaining retail stores operating under the "Woolworth's brand name and renaming itself Venator Group." But the chain are still going in the UK, and looking at ways they can still compete in the 21st Century.