Arriving in Banbury

Having flown from Cork to Birmingham, we made our way to Banbury (Oxfordshire) smoothly on the train.

In Banbury, the first thing that stuck out was the small but impressive-looking Town Hall:

Couldn't help but notice the shop building below too:

It kind of indicated that the Banbury folk took pride in their town.

And, no doubt, there were several, very old-looking, beautiful buildings in Banbury town centre:

We passed such buildings for a few days on the trot, as we came into Banbury each day of the Cropredy Festival to have a big English breakfast at Wetherspoons.

While in Banbury, we met a man from Manchester who was attending Cropredy too. 

He had attended Cropredy for many years, but he was now a little shocked at what was happening to Banbury. Most of the food stores and off-licenses now seemed to be run by ethnic minority folk, and a small, pretty town centre in the home counties was showing signs of becoming run down:

With clear sadness in his eyes, the man recalled how the same kind of social engineering had started occurring in many parts of Manchester in the 1970s. But he was really shocked to see the same process happening now in a part of the home counties.