Treacherous

The battle of Edge Hill was one of the earliest in the civil war between Parliament and the Crown, 380 years ago. It happened largely by accident and was a mess from start to finish. The two armies found themselves unexpectedly close to one another, so felt compelled to fight. Most troops on both sides were poorly trained, ill-equiped, undisciplined, inexperienced and ineffective. There was a lot of looting and running away; one commander and his troops switched sides mid-battle, another was so ineffective he was subsequently tried for treason, though exonerated by the courts. The lack of a decisive victory helped ensure the war dragged on for four more years

Edge Hill is not far away - northwest of Banbury, close to the M40 motorway. The ford in this picture is known as Traitor's Ford. I'm so familiar with it, it has never occurred to me to wonder how it got the name, but I was surprised to discover that it had its own Wikipedia page, which sets out one theory that after the battle, locals who appeared to have been to supportive of the parliamentary army were summarily executed by the King's men - possibly here

The more mundane alternative is that the name is a corruption of Traders' Ford, being a crossing place for pack animals. There is a green lane running due north from the ford - the 'Ditchedge Lane', still a bridle path - which rises from the ford and then follows the Cotswold ridge to Edge Hill, but I suppose that could support either theory. Knowing the local dialect, I think I would favour the corrupted-word theory, but I could be persuaded by a couple of skeletons

The water flowing over the road is the river Stour, which rises not far from this ford, just west of Banbury, flows west until it touches Gloucestershire, turns sharply north until it crosses the Fosse Way and then bends northwest until it joins the Avon just below Stratford. Notwithstanding some anxiety about frozen thumbs, the first decent sunshine for two weeks tempted me out on two wheels, on a network of tiny lanes that follow the Stour out west. It has a middle-of-nowhere feeling that makes the sun brighter and the air cleaner

I was inspected by a red kite and buzzed by a buzzard. I saw a herd of deer that included a genuine white hart. The white Hart was a symbol of Richard II, acquired from his mother who was a daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, who was indeed born in Woodstock, just south of here and would have been familiar with white harts, both in his hunting grounds and in folklore. It didn't do Richard much good, he was deposed, and later murdered, by Henry Bollingbrooke (Henry IV), then portrayed as ineffectual and deranged by Shakespeare (who was no doubt also familiar with the Stour). The White Hart remains one of the most common pub names in England; given this history, it's not too clear why