20th June 2018
Every once in a while, as Jess Robinson describes below, she and I go a-wandering round odd/random/interesting bits of Swindon.
Some time ago now we went checking out some of the town’s roundabouts – more interesting than it sounds. Read about that EXPOTITION here. And part two of that adventure here – in round and round we go again.
I’ve always known that Swindon, and West Swindon is green. Very. But this walk makes West Swindon’s verdant quality ever clearer.
So here we go: discovering the River Ray Parkway Walk Part 1
‘Continuing our occasional series, “Jess and Angela wander interesting parts of Swindon”, we ventured out on a sunny day to discover what the River Ray Parkway was all about.
If you live or have wandered in the south-west/south-east parts of Swindon you may have come across the odd dark green metal signpost. Some of them still contain actual signage – as you can see in the image below.
This one is at the Kingshill end of the canal towpath. It reads:
Coate Water Country Park
Lydiard Country Park
Old Town Rail Path
Wroughton
Kingshill Canal
NB: The direction in which they point isn’t reliable. Many of them have been turned around by mischief makers.
They’re labelled – where they’re readable: River Ray Parkway.
The River Ray Parkway is a green walking and cycling route, introduced in 1991 as part of the Great Western Community Forest scheme, it ran for 8 miles from Coate Water to Moulden Hill. The route was expanded from the original effort to create the Swindon Old Town Rail Path, developed with the help of Sustrans, then a small Bristol group formed to create better walking and cycling routes.
Today the route is mostly maintained as National Cycle Network route 45, started by Sustrans with a National Lottery grant in 1995.
We started out at the Moulden Hill end, and wandered along the route of NCN45, looking for the first sign. The purpose built NCN signs are quite obvious in the landscape …
National Cycle Network 45 sign
The sign shows a person and bicycle icon, with the letters “45” underneath.
The direction shown reads:
Swindon Station 3
Chiseldon 8
Avebury 18
But the green Parkway signs tend to blend into the trees so it took a while to find one.
After leaving the roads we walked through a long leafy corridor, spotting our first Parkway sign as we were almost at Shaw Forest Park (Shaw Tip on the River Ray Parkway map!).
The route from here follows the edge of the Shaw Forest Park (pop in for a wander across the hill), past the Swindon Lagoons which have signs describing the habitat readable through the fence.
Continuing south east, we catch up with a tributary of the actual River Ray, and follow it underneath the Great Western Way dual carriageway, around the giant Mannington Rec sports ground + park and into Bridgemead retail park.
For PDF of map go here: River Ray Parkway trail map
From the map, you will notice that the River Ray Parkway follows two routes from Wootton Bassett Road to Rivermead, we followed the eastern route.
The western route follows the western tributary of the River Ray, via Westlea Park and alongside Westlea Primary school. It follows the current NCN route 45, and the Western Flyer, a newer route created recently to provide a cycling-commuter route into the town centre.
We ended up this first half of the River Ray Parkway Walk Part 1 route with a cuppa at John Lewis, which is on the western part of the route.
On the embedded map you can see our route, follow the green markers from the north west corner (darker green marker), clicking on the markers will show images of the signs we found. The blue markers are the signs on the western route, as found by Jess the previous week.]
For the second half of the walk go here: https://swindonian.me/2019/08/09/discovering-the-river-ray-parkway-part-2/
Richard Jefferies Old Town walk part one and Richard Jefferies Old Town walk part two
5th June 2018
Now, prior to moving to Swindon I’d visited the place several times and found it to be a perfectly pleasant place. So, when the opportunity arrived to move here I arrived with no negative perceptions. In fact, the converse was true. By the time I moved here my part of the world on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border had been devastated by the wholesale pit closures of the 1980s. My family were at the heart of that – indeed my daughter’s first word was ‘Picket’. By the time I came to Swindon in the early 1990s I left behind nothing. And I mean – NOTHING. A pretty enough part of the country for sure – the village I lived in featured in the Domesday book. It was attractive and in the middle of a rural area. Albeit the atmosphere was akin to a very thick gravy. What with the pit muck and the quarry dust.
A visit to a C&A required two buses and a tortuous trip across two counties. We had no good transport connections, no work, no prospects, no nowt. Well slag heaps, emphysema and mass unemployment. We had that.
So! I came to Swindon. Within days I found work. Actual proper, full-time work. This one thing was little short of a miracle. I bought a house in Grange Park – a fifteen-minute walk from Shaw Ridge leisure park. Here we (my then 12-year-old daughter and I) found:
I truly felt I’d pitched up in the land of milk and honey. And y’know what? I still think that. I still think Swindon is the land of milk and honey. The southwest equivalent of the Klondike for opportunity.
So that listeners is my arrival in Swindon. I settle into full-time employment and building a life. I’m content with where I’m living, I like it perfectly well, it becomes home. But the real love affair with Swindon doesn’t begin then. To get to the igniting of that flickering fire of fondness into a truly, madly, deeply red hot love we have to go all Dr Who (the David Tennant incarnation) and do some wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff and fast forward about 16 years to when I’m in my early 50s. When compulsory early retirement comes my way. AAAAAARGGGHHHH!!!!
Fast forward another year and I begin a joint English Honours degree at the University of the West of England.
Fast Forward two more years. I’m now approaching the end of my second year at university and selecting modules for my final year. A travel writing module called “Moving Words’ piques my interest.
I have a conversation with the module leader Professor Robin Jarvis:
‘Me: Robin, I’m interested in taking the Moving Words module but, at risk of sounding a bit daft, I don’t do any travelling.
Robin: Angela, the last thing I want landing on my desk is yet another account of a gap year in Thailand. Tell me what you see when you walk to your Tesco Express.
Me: PING – classic lightbulb moment. Why? Because what I see on my walk to my Tesco Express is a piece of public art. Not that I knew that term then. Nor did I know that it formed part of a ‘thing’ called the West Swindon Sculpture Trail. I knew of one or two other sculptures but not the entire collection. So I decided that, over that summer, I’d start blogging about Swindon with a view to amassing material that might – just might – make useful source material for portfolio pieces for this module.’
And that listeners is how Born again Swindonian became to be …well … born. And, as I progressed with what largely started as a means to an end, and as I learnt more and more about Swindon and all it has to offer – that’s when I truly fell in love with the place.
I often liken Swindon to a stripper. Take the time to get to know her, make the effort to cultivate a relationship with her, and she will draw back those layers. Slowly but surely, she will reveal herself and she’ll get under your skin. She’s got under mine.
It’s now around five years and 600 posts since I started blogging as Born again Swindonian. I’m still at it because there’s so much to tell.
Late last year (2017) someone left a message on my blog. That someone was a commissioning editor for a Gloucestershire based publishing house called Amberley. They have a series of local history books called Secret XXXXXX. Would I be interested in writing Secret Swindon?
Hell yes!
Which brings us bang up to date and me about to be a published author and flogging a book. Wow!
Secret Swindon is due for publication in mid-July 2018.
After it’s been launched at the end of July it will be available in the library shop in the central library. You’ll also be able to buy it directly from Amberley and even, maybe, in local bookshops.
If you can’t wait till then you can pre-order it right now – right here: https://www.amberley-books.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=secret+swindon
My author (check me out!) profile on the Amberley website: https://www.amberley-books.com/community-angela-atkinson
29th April 2018
Earlier this week I attended a press launch of the above named-event. This one-off, set-to-be-spectacular event is the brainchild of the new and current, High Sheriff of Wiltshire, Nicky Alberry.
Uncelebrated journey celebrates Swindon and its journey by celebrating that of the much-unsung Alfred Williams – aka -the Hammerman poet.
The image below gives more information of what the event will comprise. If you can’t see it too well then visit the Uncelebrated Journey Facebook page. It’ll be much clearer there: https://www.facebook.com/UncelebratedJourney/
What’s so exciting about this innovative event is that it maps the entirety of Swindon’s cultural landscape. Just as the landscape of our beautiful country is more varied and rich than one can comprehend so too is Swindon’s cultural scene. It’s simply astonishing. What’s more it’s being brought together to tell Alfred’s story. And that story is as fascinating as that of Swindon itself.
As Total Swindon so helpfully say in their write-up:
‘The evening, full of specially commissioned pieces of music and dance seek to illustrate Williams’ amazingly varied life. Not only was he a factory worker and poet, he also served in the First World War as a Gunner and travelled to India.’
Alfred educated himself to an astonishing level: he taught himself Greek and Latin so he could read the Classics. His literary output was huge though largely – though not entirely – unrecognised in his lifetime. Alfred – THIS is your moment.
For those of you unaware of how much Swindon has to offer culturally, here’s a round-up of some of it that you can experience at this event. These are the ones I’ve covered on this blog at various times.
Then there’s:
Swindon Choral Society and a whole heap more. I could be listing them all day.
Uncelebrated Journey will be taking centre stage at Swindon’s Wyvern Theatre on Saturday the 6th of October.
SaveSave
24th April 2018
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Bank Holiday Monday May 28th 2018
at Westcott Recreation Ground (opposite ‘The Runner’ pub)
Wootton Bassett Road, Swindon
supported by
and
featuring the Blue Cross Fun Dog Show
Find the Duck Race on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/SwindonsFamousDuckRace/photos/?ref=page_internal
Please note you will be able to get your duck tickets for this year’s race from us at Asda Saturday 31 March,10am to 4pm, The Co-Op Old Town 14 April 10am to 4pm, GWH 25 April 9am to 3pm;
Christchurch Beer Festival 11, 6pm to 10pm & 12 May
10.30am to 4.30pm GWH 9 to 3pm; Co-Op Old Town 19 May 10am to 4pm
It’s a fun day out, all in a great cause – and you never know – your duck might win!
And now to Swindon Old Town Rotary
‘The Rotary Club of Swindon Old Town meets every Wednesday morning to share breakfast with likeminded friends before work.
We meet on Wednesday mornings at Hotel 20 (formerly the Kings) in Wood Street SN1 4AB for breakfast. In just over an hour a week, you’ll have the opportunity to meet other professionals who want to offer their service in the community, share ideas for fundraising, hear great speakers and get connected with the local community. Together we can do so much more. For more details contact us at Swindonoldtownrotary@mail.com‘
Now a bit about the Rotary Club in general: You might not be aware bit the Rotary Club is an international, global organisation of:
‘1.2 million neighbors, friends, leaders, and problem-solvers who see a world where people unite and take action to create lasting change – across the globe, in our communities, and in ourselves.’
The Rotary movement began in 1905 in Chicago when Paul Harris, a Chicago attorney, formed the Rotary Club of Chicago on the 23rd February. Rotary’s name came from the group’s early practice of rotating meetings among the offices of its members. Who knew? Not me.
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Swindon Philosophical society – image from their websit
Well listeners. As you know, on the odd occasion I’m known to demonstrate frustration at the suggestion that there’s nothing of cultural value in Swindon. One has to question how hard these people look! Anyway – the suggestion that Swindon has no culture is a risable one.
Now I’m pretty sure the subject of this post has passed onto my radar before but I’ve been looking the other way or something. Whatever – I’ve not, until today, registered that Swindon has a Philosophical Society. But it does! What’s more it’s been here since 1963! Interesting! Radio 4 do intermittent light drama plays around the Ferryhill Philosopher’s club and Alexander Mcall Smith, writes novels about Isabel Dalhousie and the Sunday Philosopher’s club. All of which I’ve enjoyed. It’s a rich vein it seems.
Find it here: https://swindonphilosophicalsociety.wordpress.com
The Swindon Philosophical Society meets in term-time, on Fridays from 7.40 to 9.40, at the Friends’ Meeting House, Eastcott Hill, Swindon SN1 3JF.
A typical evening’s format is a one hour talk, followed by an hour’s discussion – which generally continues in a nearby pub. Everyone is welcome – we’re a friendly bunch – just turn up on the night.
We first met in 1963 – over 50 years of great thinking!
There’s a charge of £2.00 (students free) to cover expenses.
13 April Equitable Water Sharing in the Blue Nile
20 April Fundamentalism
27 April Post Work
4 May Warfare and Welfare
11 May Swindon Festival of Literature
18 May Swindon Festival of Literature
25 May The Jordan Peterson Phenomenon
The Society meets on Fridays from 7.40 to 9.40 at the
Friends’ Meeting House, Eastcott Hill, Swindon SN1 3JF.
Find them on Twitter: https://twitter.com/swindonphilsoc
At its simplest, philosophy (from the Greek 
or phílosophía, meaning ‘the love of wisdom’) is the study of knowledge, or “thinking about thinking”, although the breadth of what it covers is perhaps best illustrated by a selection of other alternative definitions:
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