One thing that lockdown showed my son was just how easy it was to walk to villages close to where we live. We discovered that by exploring footpaths on our doorstep – Caversfield was an easy loop walk that we have completed numerous times since May last year and it’s my son’s favourite way to spend an hour in the evening.
Caversfield is somewhere we normally just drive past on our way to Banbury or Buckingham, so finding walks on our doorstep over the last twelve months has really opened our eyes to exploring close to home and just getting to know where we live more intimately.
This particular walk doesn’t offer particularly stunning views, but it does offer us an easy walk with time just to chat as we go.
We head up on the road to Fringford, the same road that our walk to Bainton ford starts and ends on.
When we first started exploring footpaths on our doorstep – Caversfield it was late Spring and all the hedgerows were coming to life. We really appreciated the colour, smells and sounds of all the birds tweeting away. And no traffic noise!
It didn’t look quite so inviting on a walk last December, but it didn’t stop us from enjoying this simple loop walk.
We follow the road with the main part of Caversfield filtering off on roads to our right until we reach the last road into Caversfield and there’s a footpath by the side of the first house on the road. I did have to check my OS map app to make sure we were going in the right direction on our first time exploring this walk. Yes, we were right. The footpath actually runs along the rear of the houses, with them on one side and trees and fields on the other.
Again it’s been interesting to see this footpath at different times of the year. It was certainly easier to walk along later in the year.
It’s a straight footpath behind the houses and does at time feel as if you’re being a bit nosy walking right next to people’s gardens but we try to focus on the trees and plants instead!
In fact, the first time we did this particular walk was the first time we got to see bluebells last year. And I for one was grateful for that. I’d taken for granted all of our wonderful bluebell walks from previous years.
We spent time identifying different plants and talking able why they were growing where they were. I really need to brush up on my tree identification skills, which became sorely apparent in 2020 with all of our lockdown walks. Never too old to learn something, and I’ve always believed that walking offers so much more than just exercise. My son is constantly learning about nature and the countryside without even realising it.
There’s a couple of spots where you can look out across the fields and we’ve watched the lifecycle of the crops growing too.
The footpath carries on past a brick wall as it heads towards the main road to Buckingham.
The footpath ends as you meet the main road. You can cross over the Buckingham Road and follow the road towards Stratton Audley (which I will cover in a future post) but for our quick loop walks we turn right and walk along the verge back towards Bicester, and home.
As I said, it’s not the most picturesque walk we’ve ever done, but it’s an easy one that we can complete in about an hour from our doorstep.
One thought on “Exploring footpaths on our doorstep – Caversfield”