The Flickr Otmoor Image Generatr

Next to the churchyard, the church itself hidden behind the cottage.

Decided not to play about with this image too much mainly because it's making me feel gloomy just looking at it.
Beckley felt strangely quiet and deserted like the rest of the small villages around Ot Moor, despite the edge of Oxford being not so far away.

This is the continuation of the Roman road as it enters the village, the top of the church tower just visible above the shrub in the centre of the image.

The previous image was taken crossing that field on the left, and I'm now under that huge black cloud and heading quickly into Beckley, if need be to take shelter in the church.
I didn't realise at the time that this was the Roman road that crosses the moor; behind me it becomes a lane lined with pretty cottages leading up to the church.
Apparently, although not particularly eye catching, the road is quite well preserved across the moor; 14 metres wide, raised up with drainage ditches on either side and underneath the grass still maintaining a surface of compacted limestone, cambered from the centre for drainage like modern roads. It is now a footpath/bridleway.
Not a great image - it was so dark! But I thought worth posting for the interest.

No roads cross the flat desolate expanse of Ot Moor, but a Roman Road dissects it almost in half running north to south and it survives as a footpath and low earthworks.

I'd hoped to take it to the wetland nature reserve in the centre of the moor, but an unnervingly close shave with a lightning bolt, a good soaking and pummeling with marble sized hailstones I decided it was too dangerous to be out and about in this very exposed landscape so shortened my walk. The Roman Road and footpath follows that hedgerow on the near horizon.

Climbing up to the village of Beckley that overlooks the moor, another storm just passing (I'd managed to shelter in thick woodlands) and another one on the way from the right.
There was blue sky between the storms but somehow I managed to be under cloud all day until almost in sight of the pub and my pick-up point.

Another storm coming up behind me so a retreat from the roadless moor to the shelter of the wooded hillside behind me.

The 7 remote villages that are dotted around the moor have long had a reputation for fiercely defending it and their right to graze and fish its waters, including several occasions in the early 19th century when angry villages armed with pitchforks stormed Oxford in protest of the local landowners deciding to drain and enclose the moor for their own use. They lost of course.

Ot Moor was under threat again in the 1980's when the planned extension to the M40 motorway was routed through its centre. Locals and Friends of the Earth bought a field directly in its path in the northeast of the moor and called it Alice's Meadow.

The name comes from the tale that Lewis Carroll, whilst picnicing on Beckley Hill (just behind me) overlooking the moor, thought the square fields of the newly drained wetlands reminded him of a giant chessboard and, so the story goes, the plot device of Alice moving across a chessboard was born and became "Alice through the Looking Glass".

In their campaign to save the moor, Alice's Meadow was divided into 3500 individual, and importantly, unregistered plots and sold all over the world, hoping to give the government an almost impossible task of Compulsory Purchase.
In the end the M40 took a more eastern route promoted by a public enquiry and missing Ot Moor, but the example of Alice's Meadow has been quite influential in attempts to stop unwanted development.

Finally made it to the fringes of the lonely moor itself, extending to the right of the image. Not a moor in the conventional sense but an area of once commonland, made up of rare freshwater wetlands and grazing that the surrounding 7 towns of Ot Moor, (actually 7 very small villages) had for centuries had free use of.
In the early 19th century the moorland was drained but in recent decades large parts have been returned to wetland which I'd been hoping to visit, but after my rather close shave with a lightning bolt a few miles back I thought it was unwise to venture onto the flat almost featureless landscape when more towering thunderheads appeared to be coming my way.
I'd been hoping to photograph these lads in a rare patch of sunlight, but by the time I got close enough the light had gone and they were showing a bit too much interest and were gathering speed towards me so I didn't hang around. Luckily they lost interest when I stopped pointing my camera at them.

falco subbuteo

numenius arquata

One of the seven 'towns' of Ot Moor, in reality all very small, spookily quiet villages that are on the minor road that rings the flat, wet 'dreary' landscape of the moor.
Very early roses among the wisteria.

Only a few miles from the north eastern suburbs of Oxford, Ot Moor and its villages feel oddly isolated and rather creepy.
You can certainly imagine some sci-fi similar to 'The Midwich Cuckoos' taking place there.

It is said that Noke was used by members of Oxford University as a refuge to escape the plague during the fifteenth century.

I didn't even see a car on this only road around the moor, then again they could have been avoiding me (this is Oxfordshire, there are standards!) as I'd used the bench in the churchyard to take off my waterproof trousers to find I was caked in mud from boot to waistband... Note: don't pull waterproof trousers over boots after walking through mud!

(I know I'm making a meal of this but I lead a very dull life; bear with me.)
Just after taking the last photo, from the low hedge that I'd been sheltering in I ventured forth (told you I was milking it) and saw this lot coming straight towards me, but hey-ho I set off on the now very slippery clay footpath you can just see, hoping I can get to those trees and a bit of shelter and sort of praying for no more lightning bolts. (Spoiler alerts, I made it.)
That hint of blue sky giving me some hope for the next six miles, but I saw very little of it.

The map shows the site of a Roman villa just on my right in this field.

I'll be glad when I've stopped posting these gloomy images. My flickr stream is always full of sunshiny England, I'm finding these positively depressing. But I've not walked seven miles in this lot not to use them!

Feeling rather rattled and on the lookout for more lightning bolts coming towards me, of course I got the camera back out of the rucksack, partly to stop it condensing and steaming up as it tends to do as my back warms my wet rucksack.
Soaking wet from the thighs down and leather boots squelching; six miles to go!

...And just about to have the most self-imposed dangerous fifteen minutes of my life.

The footpath across this large field runs out of sight to the right towards a low hedge, straight into that deluge of rain coming towards me.
I'm thinking it might be time to put the camera away and get my pac-a-mac cagoule out of my rucksack when a bolt of lightning with an ear splitting crack struck the earth perhaps two fields away just to the left of the path.
And it's heading directly for me.

My ears ringing I managed to get the cagoule on (but not the waterproof trousers) as the rain arrived and I slithered over the instantly muddy clay field.
I squatted as low as I could in the hedge holding my cagoule out like a dress to try and keep my jeans dry, but the rain pounded down and I was instantly soaked through. Another ear-splitting crack and flash and the rain turned to hailstones the size of the proverbial marbles. They powered down and I had to let go of my cagoule and hide my hands as they were cracking my knuckles. Wearing just a thin summer shirt and an even thinner waterproof they didn't half hurt!
Eventually it all calmed down again and the storm rumbled off.
I then thought I should at least give my new waterproof trousers an airing so pulled them on over soaking wet jeans and muddy boots and only managed to drag all the mud from my boots over the inside. When I eventually took them off my jeans were mud, top to toe. Another obviously stupid idea!

So still about 6 miles to go, now nervous and absolutely sodden, including my leather boots that have never been the same since I tried wading through a flooded millrace off the Oxford Canal last autumn.
I'm getting dafter by the year!

But this experience was very chastising about making stupid decisions, and all because I wanted some decent cloud photographs over the flat moorland.

It got a lot worse than this and very quickly!
But at least I managed one or two shots over the fringes of the moor, here just a field away from the village of Islip where I'd started my walk. I wish that there had been some pools of light on the ground to make the scene sparkle but not to be.

aythia ferina

Not the best photo, but the first time I have seen one so it's a record shot. I walked into a hide at RSPB Otmoor and met some people who had sat patiently for several hours in the hope of seeing one. I said 'Is that one?' a few seconds later, and sure enough it was! Beginner's luck or what?

Little Egrets (Egretta garzetta) at Otmoor Nature Reserve, south Oxfordshire, England

Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) at Otmoor Nature Reserve, south Oxfordshire, England

Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) flying at Otmoor Nature Reserve, south Oxfordshire, England

Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) at Otmoor Nature Reserve, south Oxfordshire, England

A mother greylag goose (Anser anser) and her brood at Otmoor Nature Reserve, south Oxfordshire, England