Welcome to the Rudloe and environs website.
Here you will find news, articles and photos of an area that straddles the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in north-west Wiltshire.
Contributions in the form of articles or photos are welcome. Even those with completely contrary views to mine!
Thanks to the website builder 1&1 and Rob Brown for the original idea.
Rudloescene now, in January 2014, has a sister, academic rather than anarchic, website about Box history here: http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/
It contains thoroughly professional, well-researched articles about Box and its people.
Contact rudloescene through the 'Contact' page.
Just a short hop to buy bread at Wadswick on this last day (2nd June 2020) of warm, sunny weather which has lasted throughout the latter part of May and into the first two days of June. The traffic in the Bradford Road is still not up to its full, pre-Covid levels and in the extended inter-traffic silences, one can imagine what a lovely track this would have been to walk along particularly on a day in early summer.
I would guess that this site/sight will be just a memory before long. The closest hut was used for the thrift shop and youth club.
The Bradford Road in one of the calm, inter-traffic periods
Gorse Farm beyond the trees. The farm house was effectively abandoned by the MoD after the last tenant, Aubrey Lipscombe (who worked for the Ministry of Works/PSA), moved out about thirty years ago.
Looking back whence we came - hark, a car in the distance!
Hay-making on 2nd June in the small meadow adjacent to the Thorneypits prefabs
Meadow grasses and fescues in the Bradford Road verge at Thorneypits
The view west from Thorneypits with the woodland surrounding Hazelbury Manor in the left foreground and Quarry Wood at right. The woods and hillside around Alcombe are in the middle distance with Bannerdown in the far distance.
And now the view east towards Kingsmoor Wood across new-growth miscanthus edged by oxeye daisies
Well-cut meadow at Wadswick where customers will be invited to picnic when the current cold, windy weather improves (or even before for those of a hardy nature)
Doohan's Wood from the layby at Thorneypits; right of way BOX44 runs across the middleground
One of the by-products of the Covid-19 lockdown - this lay-by is normally full of litter, now there is nothing
Trees on both sides here provide a canopy similar (but much smaller) to that provided by the now lost canopy (to Bellway development) further on
Returning up the traffic-free Bradford Road, Scots pines at left
Approaching Rudloe Fiveways now and apparently still in rural Wiltshire but ... the west Corsham conurbation awaits
Well, there was no bread at Wadswick; it has been 'discontinued' as sales were poor. Nil desperandum - we return to Rudloe where we pass the long days in feasting and happy conversation, sitting at our golden tables drinking nectar from golden cups, entertained by a minstrel on the lyre and eating sweet-smelling ambrosia. We inhale the aroma of burnt offerings lit in our honour by the people of Box hundreds of feet below in the valley.
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