{"id":640,"date":"2018-10-13T21:29:31","date_gmt":"2018-10-13T21:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=640"},"modified":"2026-08-18T21:10:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T21:10:22","slug":"north-country-2018-02","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=640","title":{"rendered":"NORTH COUNTRY 2018. 02"},"content":{"rendered":"

Early morning rain in Hinton Parva is as wet as rain in Bath.\u00a0 However, the wind was strong enough to blow it away by mid-morning.\u00a0 (We were experiencing the tail end of “Storm Callum” which has wreaked havoc in South Wales today.)\u00a0 So we went to the Trout Inn at Tadpole Bridge, near Faringdon, for a walk along the banks of the River Thames.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Trout Inn which, in it’s early days, was managed by Mr A. Herring.<\/p>\n

But why is the bridge called Tadpole Bridge?\u00a0 Nobody knows!\u00a0 The obvious answer relates to the results of amorous amphibians in the river in Spring.\u00a0 However, it has been suggested that the name of the hamlet by the bridge derives from “Toadpool”.\u00a0 But that’s not far from the obvious answer anyway…<\/p>\n

Walking downstream for a couple of miles we came to a field called “Chimney”, for some reason.\u00a0 And this field is surrounded by pillboxes for some other reason.\u00a0 Obviously the River Thames was seen as a major invasion route – even though it’s only about 20 feet wide up here!\u00a0 And it’s about 160 miles upstream of London – AND there are more than 40 locks on the way.\u00a0 Not practical if you ask me.\u00a0 Too many things to delay advancing troops.\u00a0 So there must be something secret about this field called Chimney that was worth guarding.\u00a0 Buried treasure maybe.<\/p>\n

Researching this matter, I discovered that “Chimney” (toponymically) means “Island of a man named Ceomma” and has nothing to do with fireplaces or Aga cookers.\u00a0 Also, the only things buried hereabouts are a lot of old bodies – there was an Anglo Saxon cemetery active between the mid 10th century and the mid 11th century.\u00a0 Hardly worth a row of pill boxes though!<\/p>\n

Actually, and I really didn’t know this, the real reason for all these structures is to form part of the “General HQ stoplines”.\u00a0 UK’s own Maginot Line.\u00a0 Designed to prevent the massed German\/Italian Panzer divisions reaching Birmingham.\u00a0 It appears that this “continuous anti-tank obstacle” was originally planned to be more than 840 miles long (if all the side branches are taken into account).\u00a0 Stretching from the Severn Estuary round the South of Bristol (the Green Line) to the lower Thames Estuary (via the Red Line ??? where we were) and then up to Edinburgh.\u00a0 “Only” 466 miles of it was actually completed.\u00a0 This construction feat took just three months – from June to August 1940!\u00a0 At that point somebody realised that pill boxes spaced three miles apart each manned by two home guards armed with rifles would probably not be a very successful deterrent should the tanks actually manage to get to this part of England.\u00a0 So the rest of the plan was shelved.<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to the here and now…<\/p>\n

After a light lunch at the Trout Inn, we walked upstream to Risley lock a mile or so up the imaginary invasion route.\u00a0 Past more pill boxes.\u00a0 We crossed the lock gates and a bridge over the weir before following the Thames Path down the southern bank.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The river meanders through the almost deserted countryside of Southern Oxfordshire at this point.\u00a0 And, I’ve just found out, the word “meander” derives from the name of the River Menderes (historically known as the Maeander River) in Turkey. And another useless fact is that if you take the distance of a river from source to mouth in a straight line and multiply by pi (approximately 3.142) you get a good estimation of the river’s actual total length.\u00a0 Allegedly!<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for us on our walk, where the path met the road, there was a gate.\u00a0 A locked gate. Very locked.\u00a0 So we had to find a way through the hedge to get back to the car without retracing our steps two miles back to the lock…<\/p>\n

Now, before I finish this episode, it’s time for another of Mad Mary’s funny stories<\/p>\n

THE LIE DETECTOR ROBOT<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A father buys a lie detector robot that slaps people when they lie.<\/em><\/p>\n

He decides to test it out at dinner one night.\u00a0 The father asks his son what he did that afternoon.<\/em><\/p>\n

The son says, “I did some schoolwork.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The robot slaps the son.<\/em><\/p>\n

The son says, “Ok, Ok. I was at a friend’s house watching movies.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Dad asks, “What movie did you watch?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Son says, “Toy Story.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The robot slaps the son.<\/em><\/p>\n

Son says, “Ok, Ok, we were watching porn.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Dad says, “What? At your age I didn’t even know what porn was.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The robot slaps the father.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mom laughs and says, “Well, he certainly is your son.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The robot slaps the mother.<\/em><\/p>\n

Robot for sale.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Early morning rain in Hinton Parva is as wet as rain in Bath.\u00a0 However, the wind was strong enough to blow it away by mid-morning.\u00a0 (We were experiencing the tail end of “Storm Callum” which has wreaked havoc in South… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-country-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8122,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/8122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}