Photos from walk on Thursday 7th September from Middle Assendon to Henley

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A hot day – the hottest of the year!  And nearly 10 miles.

 

Opposite the pub in Middle Assendon, a stone!

 

Climbing up to Paradise Wood, well, looking back as the path was tilled over.

 

More climbing, now out of Paradise Wood  (heaven?)

 

A long hedged path up to Cowleaze Farm

 

With views

 

The hedges were somewhat overgrown with bramble, and blackberries

 

and another berry we didn’t pay attention to. It might be the red poisonous berries of black bryony, Dioscorea communis

 

Further along we crossed a field of blue flowers, best guess is Chalk Milkwort, Polygala calcarea

 

In the woods, this trunk was admired

 

The sun burnt through to backlight the leaves. Oak:

 

Beech:

 

Descending to the Thames

 

A disturbed heron

 

Fawley Court (see notes at the end)

 

Flint bridge over the footpath

 

Heading back north on the Oxfordshire Way (a long hot climb) there was this gate to nowhere

 

We passed this way in June 2021, and this was my picture of the gate then. a little dramatised perhaps, but turns out to be a perfect expression of how hot it was today.

 

There’s lots of flowers in the gallery:

• Achillea millefolium, Yarrow
• Daucus carota, Wild carrot flower and seed head
• Filipendula ulmaria, Meadowsweet
• Solidago canadensis, Canada goldenrod, with a worker Buff-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris)
• Eupatorium cannabinum, Hemp-agrimony
• Oregano, Origanum vulgare

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Fawley Court

Until 7 Sep 2025 I included a copy of extracts from a Daily Mail article called “A second wind in the willows: the rebirth of a stately home” but my web-hosting provider has been served with a copyright infringement notice by the author of the article.  I only copied 6 paragraphs of a 33 paragraph article, believing it to be “Fair Use” as covered by the Government’s Guidance “Exceptions to copyright“.  I did not pass it off as original and made it clear that it was a quotation, and provided attribution by linking back to the original.

 

Rather than fight the case. I’m removing the quotation and the link back to the article, and what follows now is a brief extract of relevant sentences from Wikipedia.

 

Fawley Court was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. It is reputed to have been Kenneth Grahame’s inspiration for Toad Hall in his book The Wind in the Willows, written in 1908. Fawley Court was requisitioned by the British Army and used in the World War II by special forces for training.

 

Following World War II, it was run as Divine Mercy College by the Polish Congregation of Marian Fathers, with its associated library, museum and was one of the cultural centres for the Polish community in the United Kingdom until its closure and sale in 2009. It is Grade I listed for its architecture.and in 1953 sold to the Marian Fathers, a Polish clerical congregation, to be used as a boarding school.

 

In 2008 the Polish Province of the Marian Fathers put the estate up for sale due to financial difficulties. It was purchased in 2009 by a property investor for £13m. The sale has generated a controversy within the Polish community in the UK and in the Polish media. A number of court cases have arisen from the sale.

 

[Source]

 

According to the Henley Standard (2022) “Property investor Aida Dellal Hersham bought the estate after it was put up for auction in 2008 and set about restoring the mansion. It remains privately owned.”

 

The bridge near the tunnel was broken and the path was closed for some time, with no diversion [Fury at Fawley Court]. However, it was repaired at the end of 2019. [“At last, broken bridge replaced” Henley Standard].

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