Hubby and I are on a hiking holiday. First time ever for that, and just to make sure we did not get lost, we’ve chosen to walk along the Thames in England. It’s called the Thames Path, and from source to sea it is almost 300 km. We’re going to walk about 110 – 120 km.
We started from Oxford—a great excuse to spend some time reacquainting ourselves with this city of golden stone.
The Thames doesn’t actually run through Oxford, it glides by to west of the city, but there is water, water, everywhere to paraphrase Coleridge – mainly in the form of the Oxford Canal and the Castle Mill Stream. The canal was built in the last decade of the 18th century and was once the main thoroughfare for transportation of goods from the Midlands to London. Now, it is home to narrow canalboats that glide along.
Obviously, Oxford is so much more than the Thames, but as we’d already done the sights on previous visits we could allow ourselves to mosey around and just enjoy being here, in a place where erudition and education have gone hand in hand for centuries.
Today was our first walking day. And yes, we did get a bit lost (signage is not always crystal clear), but hubby is good at maps and managed to get us back on track before we’d gone too far down the wrong path.
We left Oxford at 8.40 in the morning – one of my final pics in Oxford was of Caudwell Castle, which sits on Folly Bridge where we joined the Thames Path.
Today’s destination was Abingdon – a mere 16 km stroll. Well, before the wrong turn thing. Plus, we have a tendency to go “oooo! What’s that?” which adds further mileage. So, before we finally settled down to tea and scones in Abingdon five hours later, we’d actually walked over 20 km!
Along the way we discovered that a) the Thames very often splits into two, even three separate water ways b) locks are utterly fascinating things c) the river is bordered by impressively wide swathes of wilderness, at times flowering meadows, at times veritable woods. I liked that. I liked seeing horses and cows, narrow boats puttering by, herons stepping elegantly through the waters while a red kite or two soared above.
And then we came to Abingdon. I had no expectations. Okay, okay, that is a huge lie: I had expectations on the few remains of the Abingdon Benedictine Monastery—what can I say, a history nerd is always a history nerd. But other than abbey remains, no real expectations, despite knowing Abingdon is considered one of the oldest if not the oldest continuous settlement in England. It was around when the Celts ruled the roost, when the Romans came and went, when the Anglo Saxons lived and breathed—the Benedictine monastery was founded in the 7th century, so deffo pre-Norman.
After fortifying ourselves with tea and scones, Johan and I went exploring. I was blown away. So many ancient houses, so many gardens! We visited a place called St Ethelwold’s garden and I went a bit wild and crazy with my camera. Look at those flowers, but look at those old, old houses, that elegantly concave roofline… If you’re ever in Abingdon, check it out, sit on a bench and just inhale the peace, the beauty of the place.
Now, in case you’re wondering Ethelwold (or Aethelwold as he’d say himself) was a former Abbot of Abingdon and Bishop of Winchester who lived in the tenth century and had very close ties to a sequence of kings, from Eadred to Edgar to Aethelred. But while he deffo played an important political role (sometimes, it seems, at loggerheads with St Dunstan) his most important contribution was the monastic reform of abbeys such as Abingdon. He scoffed at secular priests, insisted on well-educated monks and priests and thereby lay the founding blocks for future centres of learnings in both Abingdon and Winchester.
Now, Aethelwold strengthened the status of Abingdon Abbey, and as the years rolled by, the huge and rich Benedictine monastery grew ever richer on incomes from Abingdon markets. This did not necessarily please the Abingdon laymen, who, since the tenth century, had their own church, St Helen. We know the church existed that early because there is documentation from an Abbey chapter from the year 996 which refers to St Helen’s as the place where a man charged with stealing a bridle had taken sanctuary.
What happened with the bridle thief I do not know, but there was clearly a growing antagonism between the abbey and the parishioners of St Helen. For example, the abbey successfully managed to stop all attempts made by St Helen to expand their graveyard. Why? Because burials were sources of income, and the abbey rather liked controlling said income. There are innumerable instances of legal actions between St helen and the abbey regarding burial rights—and the abbey won every single time. At one point, St Helen was ordered to disinter 37 recently buried parishioners and have them transported for burial on abbey land—at a cost, of course…
The tensions between monks and townies exploded into violence—like in 1327 when St Helen’s bell was rung to call together the townspeople who then attacked the abbey while demanding a fair share of the market income.
These days, St Helen still stands while the abbey church is gone. It is a rather strange church—one of the widest churches in England, far wider than it is long. Its Lady Chapel also has a most magnificent painted medieval ceiling, painted in the late 14th century after the church was rebuilt in the early 13th century. That it has survived over six centuries is a miracle, what with it being painted over, knocked about by Victorian renovators and what not.
On the way back to our hotel, we passed St Nicholas, yet another ancient church. This church was built by the abbey for its lay people in the 11th century or so, and stands cheek to jowl with the former entrance to the abbey.
As to the abbey, what little remains are the domestic buildings. Beautiful in their simplicity, they stand as reminders of a time log, long past.
A simpler time? In some ways, yes, in others no. Political complexities have always existed.
A better time? Not for most of us.
Tomorrow, we’re off to Wallingford, but as that is a very long walk, I’ll not be writing tomorrow. Maybe the day after when, I think, I’ll have visited another set of abbey ruins, namely those at Reading.
Now to do expend some TLC on my feet. This hiking things comes with challenges!