Its taken a few days but I’ve carried out the new year resolution to go swimming… down at the White Horse Leisure and Tennis Centre. Its a recent addition to Abingdon, built about three years ago off Audlett Drive. We used to swim at the Old Gaol which now stands boarded up waiting for a new use.

An adult swim at the leisure centre costs £2.80. Lockers are 20p but you get that back afterwards. There is a little spin drier for your swim wear. Put your trunks into the little drum, hold down the lid… vroooooom…and they are dry in ten seconds. And there are little robots that go about on the pool floor cleaning the water after hours.

Griff Rhys Jones, Dara O’Briain and Rory McGrath have been retracing the comic journey in Jerome K. Jerome’s novel ‘Three Men in a Boat’. They rowed from Kingston to Oxford, passing through Abingdon this evening on BBC2.

This map was created in 1440 by the monks of Abingdon Abbey. However, it has been updated with some modern buildings – circa 1600.

This builidng is between the Ock Mill Beefeater Restaurant and TSA (Tyre Sales Abingdon ). What is strange is that it has no billboards to proclaim what it will be. Normally one would expect that a new nursing home for elderly people would dazzle us with how many beds it will provide, who is funding it, and what a great facility it will be. But no. That is yet to come.