The window display of the British Heart Foundation has turned to weddings. This white dress graces their window in the precinct.

In the Sue Rider Foundation shop there are a wedding dress and a wedding suit next to each other.

Here in the window of Sketchleys in the precinct they aim to get your dress looking its very best for the big day.

Alongside, the sign it says that Abingdon is loosing Sketchleys on the 30th June. And if you have not retrieved your suit from dry cleaning by then, it will have to be picked up from Didcot.

Abbey House was opened in the early 1990s on the site of the Old Cattle Market. The Car Park alongside is called the Cattle Market Car Park, but “Cattle Market House” did not quite have the aplomb for the new central administrative Offices of the Vale of the White Horse District Council.

Staff moved in from regional offices in Faringdon, Wantage, and Abingdon to this grand new building all under one roof. It was named Abbey House, and the older building alongside became Old Abbey House.

In 2003 the entrance was rebuilt with ramps to make it more accessible, and the area downstairs kitted out as a service centre with desks. Here local people can pick up leaflets or consult on a whole range of District Council services:

• Economic Development
• Local Planning and Development Control
• Most Car parks and Public toilets
• Arts and Tourism
• Leisure and Recreation
• Housing benefits
• Housing (through Vale Housing Association)
• Elections
• Refuse collection
• Building Control
• Street cleansing
• Environmental Health including inspection of food, taxis etc
• Council Tax

The sign of the District Council incorporates the White Horse on the Ridge Way at Uffington, King Alfred who was born at Wantage, and an Abbot from Abingdon. There is water perhaps for the river Thames, or perhaps for the River Ock which unites the Vale.

This is the view that anybody leaving Abingdon, and heading south onto the A34 can see. The sign is for Newbury and the M4 Motorway.

But go under the A34 and the next junction can take you first to Dalton Barracks and Marcham, or go further and you get to Wantage or Witney.

Keep going round, and just before the north-bound Oxford sliproad onto the A34, there is what is called a Department of Transport weighbridge.

The Law relating to Overloading

Vehicles that are overloaded can cause excessive wear and damage to roads, bridges etc. Serious overloading can affect safety by making the vehicle less stable, causing braking difficulties and increasing breaking distance.

Anyway, escape getting a ticket at the public weighbridge, and you will notice the bank of the A34 is thick with Teasel – some dried combs from last year, but most is this years new growth.

Carry on round, back under the underpass and you are heading back into Abingdon. Just on the left can be seen the red corner of a sign advertising the Miele UK distribution Headquarters.

“Forever better” has been the Miele philosophy ever since the company was founded in 1899 by Carl Miele and Reinhard Zinkann, when they made their first wood drum washing machine. Miele, the manufacturers of kitchen appliances moved to Abingdon in 1981, and have thrived.

Anyway, best to turn off now. The highway code does not advise circling round a traffic roundabout repeatedly….

Progress is still being made.

It may not be quite finished yet, but the roof is on, and one roof side ends high above the other, like a ski jump or take-off ramp.

In the foreground the previous Christian Centre is dwarfed by the new construction.