There was a hard frost last night which stayed most of the day. The nearest the sun got to appearing was soon after dawn, then it clouded over.

It can be difficult doing This Abingdon blog when I’m away, but today in Bristol I found an Abingdon connection…

The Pier furniture shop in Bristol has just 3 days left before it is closed by the receiver. The receiver is using the same posters as Woolworths. Maybe they got a cheap job lot.

There was not much left at the Pier. But look at the writing on the boxes and you’ll see they have an HQ with an Abingdon address.

We bought a lot of our furniture from the Pier ‘Seconds Warehouse’ in nearby Milton Park .

I can’t really believe it but we are near the end of an era…

Going,

Going,

Gone!!!

It was the Halfords store in Abingdon that closed on Friday 2nd January 2009.

But the first three pictures are of Woolworths who are into their final countdown.

Its not so long ago that they had a major revamp. This is before. This is after. It just wasn’t enough, sadly.

The Abingdon Boundary walk began on the Market Place, and followed the 1556 town boundaries – as close as possible, but missing out the bit where the chamberlain used to swim the river.

The Town Crier announced each stop by wishing everybody a ‘Happy New Year.’

and Martin Smith described the old town boundaries as we went.

The walk differed from all previous years, in that the Abbey Millstream could be crossed at the new bridge, and so we probably kept closer to the original boundary.

Then we crossed the weir to end where Abingdon had a little land on the far bank.

This boundary stone marks the spot. It is currently being used by the envionment agency as a gate latch. Here is Martin Smith and a lady over from France, who managed to do the walk in high heels. The going was firm, and ice remained on some puddles.