According to Agnes Baker (¹), access to Abingdon Abbey was once controlled by at least four gateways, of which the surviving Abbey Gateway was the principal entrance.

Above is the Abbey Room; straight ahead stands the Old Abbey House Hotel in Abbey Close; and to the right is the Abbey Hall, home to the Abbey Cinema. Walk on and you reach the Abbey Gardens, and beyond that the Abbey Meadows. Down Checker Walk are the Abbey Buildings that did belong to the Abbey. Even though most of the Abbey has long since vanished, the name Abbey is everywhere.

When I took this picture, on Wednesday, a broad band of late afternoon light stretched down the middle of the gateway. Since then, we have had two days of rain.

¹ Baker, Agnes. Historic Streets of Abingdon. Abingdon: The Abbey Press, 1957.

The millstream leaves the River Thames close to the weir and passes under a humped wooden bridge.

The water level in the millstream remains remarkably steady, even when the Thames is in flood. On the far bank there is a tangle of mossy trees, beyond which the buildings on Audlett Drive can be seen, including Snakes and Ladders and Protyre.

The stream is overgrown with fallen trees and water vegetation. In January another tree fell across the water, creating an obstacle for a pair of swans that regularly travel up and down the millstream.

One of the swans can be seen leaving the water and briefly using the bank to get around the obstruction.

The stream then flows beneath the green girder Thames View Bridge.

This bridge connects the Thames View houses to the Abbey Meadows, and here there is noticeably more birdsong, perhaps encouraged by garden bird feeders nearby.

There seem to be robins every few metres along this stretch.

There are also plenty of moorhen,

ducks and other water birds.

At the end of Abbey Close is another bridge, where a sign politely says “Love Abingdon” and “Please take your litter home.” I’ll be visiting this stretch of three bridges throughout 2026 to see how it changes month by month.

The millstream was created in the 10th century, when Abbot Æthelwold rebuilt Abingdon Abbey. It helped drain the abbey grounds while also providing a controlled flow of water to power the abbey’s mills.

This morning, along the wilder edges of the Abbey Meadow, blackberries were ripening. On one side of a bramble bush, beside the cycle path, people were picking and tasting as they went — “That one’s lovely!” “Ooh, that’s sour!” “We’ll need a stepladder to get those.”

Across the other side of the brambles, near the long grass, there were plenty of juicy blackberries. Wasps flew past the firmer ones, drawn to fruit that had gone soft and squishy.

Ladybirds were also out in numbers on the berries (I though they ate aphids). Bluebottles and other flies landed on blackberries, and blackbirds flew to pick off the ripe fruit.

Where wild clematis threaded through the brambles, a Gatekeeper butterfly rested, its wings frayed at the edges.

And in the wildflower circle, bumblebees were busy on the scabious, bumbling from flower to flower in search of nectar.

Children played in the playground nearby.

We are into another hot spell in Abingdon, and the grass in the Abbey Gardens has faded to the same sandy colour as the path.

The Indian Bean Tree, with its oversized leaves and exotic flowers, has just finished its brief flowering. The trees are still green and contrast to the dry grass below.

Canna lilies are beginning to flower, rising above the snapdragons in the formal beds.

In the wilder corners on both sides near the hotel, there’s a drift of taller plants and flowers that insects clearly prefer to the formal beds.