The Seven Shires Way - Stage 5

Wardington to Banbury (4 Jan 2013)

Happy New Year. January always feels like a long month so time for a walk. If you remember we left off at Wardington. We were out of sync. with the suggested stages in the book so took the opportunity to catch up (so to speak). This made the walk a bit shorter than usual but then we added two miles at the end to walk back into Banbury, leaving the recommended route just to the east of Overthorpe.

Usual journey to Banbury but on the later 10:36 train from Oxford. This connected well with the Stagecoach 200 bus out to Wardington. Usual crew, P, N & T with the addition of S. Weather dry, not too cold, overcast to start with until later in the day when the sun came out. A great improvement as for most of December it had been raining. Set off from Wardington at 11:30 and skirted around the village to end up in Upper Wardington. T declared the village attractive with ironstone cottages and old farm houses (no longer farms). N pointed out that it couldn’t really be rated as a village as the pub had disappeared and there was no obvious shop.

Soon tramping across soggy fields and soon covered in red/brown iron stained mud. The ever present hum of the M40 was evident to the west (about 5 km away). The route follows another way marked path called the Jurassic Way. Plenty of mud at field entrances and gateways – apparently farmers seem happy to have their animals wade through a quagmire at every gate (perhaps there is a connection with dinosaurs and Jurassic Way here?)

Route went under the dismantled line of the Great Central Railway from Rugby to Banbury and shortly afterwards we crossed a tributary of the Cherwell into Northamptonshire. An opportunity to wash the boots off as we approached the village of Chacombe with its obvious lumps and bumps of a deserted medieval settlement. Yet more ironstone cottages but we noted that the newer builds were actually only faced with ironstone replica materials and the rear and sides were built of brick.

The George and Dragon pub in Chacombe was open so as it was 12:30pm we stopped off for a pint of Everards Beacon ale. S had cider of some sort. {Lightly enforced rule: Never pass by an open pub unless it is Greene King}. Pub rated as 6 out of 10 food looked interesting and they didn’t object to walkers.

Stopped for a sandwich lunch just to the south of Chacombe on a bench on the 15^th tee of the Cherwell edge Golf Club (the Seven Shires Way crosses several fairways). P suggested that we need to give more detail about what we had for lunch – perhaps next time.

Tree south of Chacombe (SP495432)

Took the only picture of the day of a solitary tree at (SP495432) and carried on south to Middleton Cheney which is a large village. Lot of new houses being built at SP498424 the book refers to this as a field. Not surprising really. The M40 junction is 2km away, and Banbury station with trains to London and Birmingham is 4km away.

Middleton was the end of the stage in the book but we decided to push on towards Warkworth. Why do all paths we follow go past sewage works or scrap yards?

Across the A422 with great care and eventually left the Seven Shire Way at SP489412 to head west to Overthorpe and then on a road across the M40 into Banbury (Grimsbury) to the Bell Inn for a well-deserved drink. Back on the 16:55 from Banbury. Agreed that next time we would miss out the small section of the official path between Warkworth and the Oxford Canal.

Summary:  About 7.5 miles. Good to start the New Year (2013) with a pleasant walk though attractive countryside. A rusty day – rusty mud, rusty houses and rusty joints but some lubrication was at hand.