2012 Mayor of Abingdon’s Bowls Challenge

1 Reply

I took a short break from watching the Olympics on TV to see some live sport on Friday in Abingdon …
Mayors Bowls Competition
The 2012 Mayor’s challenge bowls competition was taking place at the bowls club in Albert Park.

Normally the match is between the Mayor of Abingdon’s team, and the Lord Mayor of Oxford’s team. But this year the Lord Mayor of Oxford could not raise a team. So instead the Mayor of Abingdon’s team (which included the Mayor and some Abingdon town councillors and some standard players) played the Vale of White Horse (which included some Vale district councillors).
Mayors Bowls Competition
It was a close match. When I left, about half way through, the Vale team were slightly ahead.

Not all the councillors got the dress code exactly right, but they had come straight from work.

Nag’s Head Refurbishment Begins / Salter Steamer Landing Changed

7 Replies

Nags Head Refurbishment Begins
As you enter Abingdon, the news board outside Goffs tells you … “Riverside Pub set to reopen doors.”
Nags Head Refurbishment Begins
Yesterday Spike sent me this picture from the river saying “Renovation going well and it’s fantastic to see all the metal shutters gone and life back into this historic Abingdon pub. Forecast to open mid September.”
Nags Head Refurbishment Begins
During the work, the landing stage for Salters Steamers has had to be moved to the Upper Reaches Hotel. This may be just until the landing area is made safe.
Nags Head Refurbishment Begins
On a warm summer’s day like today there were quite a few people swimming in the river, some out in the middle, who did not see the Salter’s Steamer to Oxford until very late.
Nags Head Refurbishment Begins
One of the strongest arguments put forward for keeping the open air pool, just a short distance from this shot, was that it would protect against drownings in the river.

Peace Vigil

Leave a reply

Peace Vigil
On Monday a dozen members of Abingdon Peace Group gathered at the War Memorial in Abingdon to mark the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan on August 6th 1945.

This vigil has been held in Abingdon every August for the last thirty years, and reminds us of the tens of thousands of people who died immediately, and the many more who died subsequently of the after-effects of radiation, both in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki which was bombed 3 days later on August 9th 1945.

MG Old Speckled Hen keeps on rolling along

5 Replies

In Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, Greene King have a brewery that produces beers that include a number that were once produced by Morland in Abingdon, including Old Speckled Hen.
Old Speckled Hen
In the brewery visitor centre there is a model of the Old Speckled Hen car that once drove MG workers to work in Abingdon. The original MG car could well be in America, and the one in the museum is made with the help of bottle tops.
Old Speckled Hen
Over the last decade or so Greene King have acquired a number of other breweries, and shut them down to centralise production in their brewery in Bury St Edmunds.

In 2006 they opened a state of the art bottling plant called Old Speckled Hen Hall.

Old Speckled Hen was a beer specially produced for the 50th anniversary of MG car production in Abingdon. It keeps on rolling along, having become the beer that won prizes, and created demand beyond Morland, and Greene King hostelries.