Thanks again to Helen Peacocke for her book Paws Under the Table, 40 dog-friendly walks from Oxford to the Cotswolds (Wychwood Press, ISBN 978 1 902279 35 0).
This time we drove to Lower Oddington, just west of Stow-on-the-Wold and did an hour-and-a-half walk via Adlestrop and Daylesford before downing a pint of Hooky at the Fox, a flagstoned, beamed and inglenooked foodie pub.
And, yes, I took a photocopy of the Edward Thomas' poem Adlestrop with me and read it aloud to Jess and Tufty near the disused station. (Copied from my prized Faber Collected Poems, 1945.)
We also visited St Nicholas' church, Lower Oddington and saw the medieval doom painting that was restored early last century (photo above).
Here is Aldlestrop:
Yes. I remember Adlestrop---
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop---only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and father, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
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