Helen sent me a picture of a tree near the skate park and the leisure centre in Abingdon. She did not know who decorated it or why.

Guesses or insider information welcome.

M reports that a deep ditch and bank have appeared at the gap in the tree line just west of Chanterelle Way play area, blocking access to the field path to Mill Road.

He says it does not look like utility works as it does not connect with anything. People are still getting through but it is very slippery in the wet conditions.

Also giant Lego bricks have appeared along Mill Road blocking vehicle access into the fields.

I would add that there was an unauthorised encampment in September on the field next to Mill Road. It could be that the land owners are trying to stop further encampments. The land owners, and local people, may well know better.

I am thankful to Sandra from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, for this letter to the ‘Editor of the Abingdon and Reading Herald’, written by her great great great Uncle Joseph Argyle of Abingdon in the very wet and miry year of 1879 …

Joseph left many journals, and inspired Sandra’s writing, and perhaps also had some influence on Percival Argyle, his grand nephew who was a journalist himself and sent reports to the Herald while he was on the WW1 war scene in France. Percival was killed and his name appears on the monument commemorating Abingdon’s fallen soldiers.

P.S. I would love to read those journals.

Thanks to Gordon for this. There was a public exhibition yesterday at Abingdon Vale Cricket Club for a proposed sand and gravel quarry on farmland between the River Thames and the A415.

The entrance would be opposite the Culham Science Park.

A larger scheme for the same site was opposed by residents, and opposed by English Heritage who did not want the bronze age cemetery at Fullamoor Farm to be destroyed. And so the proposed quarry area has been reduced in size, and traffic across the Culham and Clifton Hampden bridges removed.

Gordon says “The transport page is interesting – ‘level of additional traffic insignificant’, ‘no perceptible increase in queueing or delay’. The map seems to indicate the route to the A34 through Abingdon town centre”

“It was stated that 40% of the traffic would go through Abingdon throughout each working day, amounting to 4 trucks every working hour.”

He just wanted to bring this to people’s attention. A planning application will be going to Oxfordshire County Council early in 2016. The consultation can be found at fullamoorquarry.co.uk