Next in our 'Mind Your Business' series is Creating a Watlington Brand!

Local businesses are invited to join us at the Spire & Spoke on Wednesday 26th April at 5:30pm to hear about our newest project for which we have successfully been awarded funding from SODC.
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RSVP via our Eventbrite page to hear more!

The first in our new meeting series "Mind Your Business" designed to support and inform local businesses.

Watlington Business Association (WBA) has organised a meeting with members of the Watlington Parish Council (WPC) planning committee on the Watlington Relief Road.

The key objective of the meeting is for the planning committee to listen to issues/concerns from the businesses in Watlington. There will be a presentation from the planning committee explaining where they are in the process.

The meeting will take place on Friday 3rd March at 5.30pm in the Function Room at The Watlington Club, 20 High Street. Anyone with a local business interested is invited to attend.
There will be ample opportunity for questions so come prepared!!

In addition, there will be two drop-in exhibitions organised by Oxfordshire County Council on Thursday 23rd February 6 - 8pm at Pyrton Village Hall and Thursday 9th March 6 - 8pm at The Watlington Club. Members of the WPC planning committee will again be available for questions.

If you are unable to attend either of these events in person, you can share your view on the proposals by completing an online questionnaire before 20th March. Visit https://letstalk.oxfordshire.gov.uk/watlington-relief-road for more details.

Printed copies of the proposals and survey are available at Watlington Library.

If you would like to attend the WBA meeting on the 3rd March please register your attendance in advance using our Eventbrite page.

The WBA are looking for a someone to join their Management Committee. After elections were held at the AGM last week there remains one space on the committee. We welcome applications from anyone with a local business that is interested in joining the committee to further the aims of the organisation.

We meet once a month (excluding December & August). Time commitment between meetings entirely depends on what projects you would like to take on.
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For more information please speak to any of the committee members listed on the contact us page or email [email protected].

Our AGM was held at The Spire & Spoke on Friday 7th October. Draft minutes are available below for inspection. 

​We would like to extend a huge thank you to Jan Willis, Susan Fotherby, Karyn Buck, Bill Buck, Loraine Smith (not pictured) and Robin Holmes-Smith for organising a fantastic Christmas Market! Without their hard work and dedication the market wouldn’t have happened and we’re sure you will agree that the market is the highlight of the town calendar! 
 
We are looking for two or more volunteers to join the Christmas Market Organising Committee. Specifically, we’re looking for some to organise the overall logistics of the market and some to manage marketing and social media for the event. If you are interested, please email [email protected].

We were delighted to see Watlington Hill featured in a recent Guardian blog about UK winter walks. Text reproduced from the Guardian's site below.

Start/finish National Trust car park, Watlington Hill
Distance/time 7 miles/4 hours
Refuel Fox and Hounds, Christmas Common
There’s something particularly magical about ancient routes in winter. Curls of wood smoke, the chatter of a startled blackbird, dew-draped webs – in this weather, I feel like I’m walking in the past. Everywhere you look on this walk are signs of earlier generations who built their lives in this land. Watlington Hill may look untamed but it’s the result of centuries of sheep farming that transformed it from woodland into rare chalk grassland, now home to numerous endangered insects and plants.
Commanding views across the Thames Valley reveal a patchwork field system – a result of 18th- and 19th-century land enclosures, whereby larger fields were divided up and hedged, and common land was privatised. The result? The poorest country dwellers, reliant on the common’s free resources, were forced into towns to look for work. Hedgerows themselves are now in need of protection – they’re important wildlife corridors in intensively farmed landscapes, and a key tool in our race to decarbonise.
Head downhill along the edge of the White Mark – a chalk triangle cut in 1674 to give the illusion of a spire on the parish church when seen from a distance. At the bottom of the hill, turn left on to the ancient Icknield Way. Running from Norfolk to the Dorset coast, this route is one of the oldest in the country – many archaeologists believe its origins are prehistoric. After a mile, turn left to head south towards Dame Alice Farm – look for the unusual chalk stone cottage, then meander along the trackways to Dumble Dore (perhaps an inspiration for JK Rowling?) and on to Greenfield Copse. Here you’ll spot 2,000-year-old iron age earthworks – probably the remains of a homestead or livestock enclosure. There’s even history in the trees – look for coppiced beech trees, which have been cut down and allowed to regrow more than one trunk from the same base (known as a “stool”). It enabled people to get more usable timber from one tree, and it’s an indicator that a woodland is very old.
From here, loop round via Hollandridge Farm and along the unsurfaced Hollandridge Lane. It’s a Saxon route – more than 1,000 years old – which acted as the spine road for the 12-mile-long “strip parish” of Pyrton. The “strip” takes in land on the valley floor (best suited for settlements, offering shelter and reliable water sources), but also rougher land on the hillside and tops of the chalk escarpment, which was valuable for seasonal grazing, woodland and quarrying.
The footsteps of ancestors will then lead you to the Fox and Hounds at Christmas Common. Mead optional.

Mary-Ann Ochota, TV presenter and author of Hidden Histories: a Spotter’s Guide to the British Landscape

For the full article click here.