Weather-wise last Friday wasn’t that great a day. Near blanket cloud and a high chance of rain was perhaps not the most ideal of conditions for a gentle photo walk around South Oxfordshire. But four-walls syndrome was kicking in and escape from article writing was required.

In the end it was quite an eventful escapade – charged by a rabid hoard of cows was just one high-light. Another was discovering one of the footpaths (a long stretch that runs along Mill Brook and Kibble Ditch just south of Brightwell-cum-Sotwell) was rather underutilised and smothered with huge patches of nettles, brambles and thistles and, less dangerous until they poke you in the face towering drifts of cow parsley – not ideal conditions for blundering through in shorts! Legs were duly lacerated and stung to the n’th degree.

Despite the conditions a handful of worthy snaps were collected. Ostensibly the walk was to test out the new Locosys GPS tracking device that, through the magic of some free GeoSetter software, links the location with a photograph and in-beds the details directly into the photos EXIF data; needless to say I forgot to press the ‘track’ button and returned data-less.