Escapade at 8 High Street has closed down, so there is a little less fun to go around. It was a gift shop selling jewellery, and candles and incence sticks and stone ornaments and colourful cards. There was a room downstairs with a glass counter where you could examine jewellery, and a back room up some steps where they kept second hand books, and adult games (some a little risky).

Another shop that recently closed was one of of the four shops on the Wootton Road. It sold live pets of the jungle variety: amphibians, spiders, chamileans, and insects. It has moved to the Cowley Road in Oxford.

Abingdon’s own tattoo shop, Skin Obsession, was forced to move from Ock Street to Stert Street last year when the previous shop premises was sold for housing.

It is a tattoo, body piercing and jewellery shop.

Not everybody was too keen on a Tattoo Shop opening in Stert Street. But there is another side to that. I see a comment on one Alternative website called the Knowhere guide says “Skin obsession in abingdon, not too sure bout the place but the tattooist is lovely!”

Unfortuneately, her partner is not there to help anymore. There was a motor-cycle accident last year, and she will be moving soon.

This afternoon at about 3 PM there was a parade of the Soldiers from Dalton Barracks. They have been granted the freedom of the town, and were exercising their freedom to “march round the town with drums beating and bayonets fixed”.

This meant that no cars could be parked along the route which went down East St Helens Street and up West St Helens Street where these pictures were taken.

The street cleaner came up and down this route about six times this morning so the road should be looking as well brushed as the shoes of the soldiers.

Dalton Barracks is a near part of Abingdon, situated in the nearby village of Shippon. The Royal Logistics Corps have been based at Dalton Barracks since 1992, when the army took over from RAF Abingdon. The two regiments of the Royal Logistics Corps stationed there: transport stores, equipment and ammunition to wars and trouble spots around the world, and the airfield is still used for large exercises.

As you can tell these images of the Drayton Road allotment site are not completely up to date. They were taken in January, but while I’m on the theme of allotments, and since the gates were locked when I visited, these will have to do.

These form the smallest allotments, located next to the sewage works. Until recently they were under utilised. Half the area was fenced off to find an alternative use – a use that does not preclude their return to being allotments. This brought plots closer together and has led to more plots being taken up.