• A call out for Oxford’s forgotten phone boxes

    Nestled into a corner on Catte Street across the way from Oxford’s famous ‘Bridge of Sighs’, stands an old red telephone box. It is in a sorry state. The door is locked. The paint peeling. Its contents long since carted away.  Most people pass it by without so much as a glance. Occasionally a tourist will stop to take a selfie, for they have read in the guidebooks that this is a monument to British telecommunications history, that the design has iconic status. But for me, standing here looking at its sad empty shell, this cherry-coloured cubicle with its distinctive domed roof brings back memories.

    April 25, 2026
    Street Life, Trade and Industry

  • Bewitched by the bluebells of Bagley Wood

    For although there is a hint of rain as we set off early one morning last week, the sky is as blue as the flowers we have ventured out south of Oxford to see. For this is bluebell time. Britain’s favourite flower.  And according to Bea, the best place to experience its full beauty is at Bagley Wood. The time of year that the 568 acres of ancient woodland rolls out the blue carpet as if in readiness for a royal arrival.

    April 18, 2026
    Flora and fauna

  • A snake’s head spectacular at Addison’s Walk

    At exactly this time last year I wrote on these pages about my outing to Iffley Meadows in search of Oxfordshire’s county flower, the snake’s head fritillary. I’d been informed that this was one of the few places close to the city where one could see in any numbers these delicate plum-coloured bells with their distinctive reptilian markings. And although I had been rewarded by the sight of a smattering of what have affectionately been called by descriptive names like ‘chequered lily’, ‘frog cup’, or ‘chess flower’ it was not the carpet, the swathes, the spectacle I had been expecting.  For that, I was told later with a nod and a wink by those in the know, I must go to Addison’s Walk, a one mile raised pathway that circles an ancient island water meadow between tributaries of the River Cherwell in the grounds of Magdalen College.

    April 4, 2026
    Flora and fauna

  • At the Cherwell Boathouse with Roger Forster and Bob Dowling

    I’d arranged to meet Roger Forster and Bob Dowling, the double act who look after the boating side of things down here amongst the willows on the edge of the water, still high and fast flowing from the recent rainfall.  They are preparing for the upcoming punt hire season and there is much work to be done. For their fleet of flat-bottomed boats, stored over winter in a large brick outbuilding need sanding down and varnishing, repairing, and repainting. And there are new punts to be finished, their workhorse shells made strong for a summer of bumps and battering. But then they are old hands at this kind of thing. Because they have both been at it a very long time.

    March 13, 2026
    Washhouses & other watery places

  • Grinling Gibbons in Oxford

    For so detailed and realistic are the flowers, fruits and foliage carved around the border that they seem as if they are still sprouting and suffused with life, so rounded and realistic that you might feel inclined to reach out and pluck them for the table.

    March 7, 2026
    Arts and crafts, Flora and fauna

  • Springtime at St Sepulchre’s

    A bright sunny day this week found me heading up Walton Street to St Sepulchre’s cemetery. Sandwiched between a Londis convenience store – with its mops, brushes and buckets of…

    February 28, 2026
    Flora and fauna

  • 100 years at Hill End

    This is Hill End Camp, 67 acres of unspoiled countryside four miles west of Oxford, protected by deed of trust for the outdoor education of children. And it is here that I am heading today, 100 years after the first cohort of infants from West Oxford Elementary School arrived by charabanc back in 1926. A pioneering project that championed a belief in the physical and phsycological benefits of being in the ‘great outdoors’, of immersing yourself in nature. And I am delighted to say that it is still going strong.

    February 21, 2026
    Flora and fauna