Tysoe Windmill Walk

I’m not one of those bloggers who pretends to have a perfect life. In fact, quite often things don’t go to plan; take our little jaunt out towards Banbury a couple of weeks ago.

Unusually, we both had some spare time, so decided to head a bit further afield than usual. We headed to a village near Banbury called Upper Tysoe. This is mainly because I found some easy walking routes on OS Maps  in that area, also there looked like there were some interesting features to look at (I have to keep my photographer happy!)

From the off things went wrong. Firstly, after researching said walking routes, I forgot to download them.  Then, even more seriously, I broke Luke’s camera. It was one of those stupid things that I wish I could take back, but I can’t and it’s going to cost me! I pulled Finn’s snowsuit from the boot and, unknown to me, the camera was on top. As I saw that black shape bouncing down the road, I felt my stomach lurch. Luckily, I’m sure it can be fixed as it is the movable screen that I’ve damaged. Needless to say, I’ve offered to pay and I will sort it out when I have time. In the meantime we have my camera so it’s not completely hopeless.

Anyway, on to the walk. I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that it actually turned out fine. I have a very good memory for directions and I could remember the main points of interest that I’d researched. Also, the footpaths were fairly easy to navigate. That’s not to say we didn’t get a little bit lost, well not lost as I knew where we were, I just wasn’t entirely sure how to get where we wanted to go!

We left the village and headed towards Tysoe windmill (always handy to have a big waypoint on top of a hill). The views from here over the countryside and down towards the Tudor manor at Compton Wynates were beautiful. I was using this walk to test out my new flask, so we stopped for a drink and a breather.

We then headed down the hill towards the manor. I will admit, I went a bit wrong here (and may have trespassed a little), but we ended up in the right place, so it counts as a successful walk in my book. We saw lots of deer, but they were too quick to snap. Really must work on our wildlife photography skills!

We walked around the woods, letting Finn stretch his legs as he was getting fractious, before picking up the footpath back to the village.

It was a shorter walk than I wanted, but as I was a tad underprepared, it was just good to get out and be able to find our way back.

If you want to do a proper walk in the area, here’s a route I created on OS Maps.

Have you had any disasters recently? I can’t be the only clumsy one!