Lower Assendon - Bix - Catslip - Warburg Nature Reserve

26 Dec 04 (Boxing Day)

• Total distance : 6 miles (of which about 55% is on metalled road)
• Start point : Park beside phone box on B480 at Lower Assendon, 1 mile outside Henley. SU 745845
• Weather : Cloudless and windless, temperature at start -1C
• Muddiness rating (*=dry, *****=awful) *
• People passed : One mountain biker, one man with three dogs (twice), a girl on a horse that looked about two sizes too small for her, lots of folk at nature reserve.
• Camera: Olympus C5060 digital compact. Images taken before deletions = 42

Some days just have an inspirational quality. You'll know what I mean. That first morning on a holiday in the Med, when you feel the warm sun on your back and the sand between your toes.... well excuse me but I find a bright cold day in the Chilterns has the same effect. I concede it's probably age-related, before anyone gets in first.

Icy puddles crushed pleasantly beneath my boots as I went up the tiny winding lane to Bix, passing the curiously-named Solanum Farm, which hints at potatoes or maybe Deadly Nightshade - it looks unsuitable land for spuds. Even though it was nearly eleven there was no-one about, and no traffic, but this is always a quiet road. At Bix, the path leaves the road and heads across a field into woods. These are full of bluebells in late April and early May but in the low, cold light at this time of year the colour is restricted to tree barks and the warm red saw marks on recently felled conifers.

This was the first time I'd used the Olympus in the shade of a forest and each time I switched it on I had force the flash mode to "off". I find it frustrating that my settings don't "stick", especially as the lens cap can't be used when the camera is on. Each time I switch it off a servo winds in the lens : I bet that shortens the battery life no end. Another grouse is that the on/off switch is far too close to the Mode dial. Half the time I nudge the mode to replay when I'm switching the thing off. Mutter mutter. Never happened on the Kodak Retinette.

And while we're at it - this wretched delay between pressing the shutter and the thing actually firing is maddening. The blurb from Olympus crows on about how it's so flippin' short it's practically unnoticeable - well I bloody well notice it. Personally I want my camera to operate when I say so, not after an arbitrary delay programmed in by a boffin in the Olympus R&D lab who feels I can wait around while his little creation auto-focusses, auto-exposes and for all I know auto-downloads new ringtones before actually capturing what the paying customer is pointing it at. Maybe I'll get used to it. Then again I'll probably get used to Maggie not being Prime Minister when she's finally voted out.

The path through the woods to Catslip can get very muddy, but there are short excursions around the worst bits.

Catslip is a pretty little village with a fine example of a grain-store, sitting up on curved stone plates to keep vermin out. One might think the old half-timbered and flint cottages are the homes of horny-handed folk of the land, but the rows of new Beemers and Aston Martins on the green tell a different story. I took the track past Soundess House (which I think was Michael Heseltine's house at one time) down to the Warburg Nature Reserve and then followed the road, past the ruined 16th Century St James church, to Bix, and then back down the hill to Lower Assendon - where incidentally there's a nice pub, though I resisted it on this occasion.

Click here for map > BixMap

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