The life of the Evenlode and its valley is described in a gem of a book, Sweet Evenlode, writes CHRIS KOENIG

The Evenlode is 42 and a bit miles long - or shorter if you were to straighten it out as its companion railway line, designed by Brunel in 1845, could be said to do. It starts with a series of streams near Moreton-in Marsh and ends by flowing into the Thames near Cassington, just above Swinford toll bridge.

The most dramatic of the streams forming its source may be found in the gardens of the great house at Sezincote, designed by Samuel Pepys Cockerell (not to be confused with his son Charles Robert who designed the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) where it starts its journey between two stone elephants with upraised trunks.

The house and garden were designed in Indian style in the early 19th century for the architect's brother, Sir Charles, who had made a fortune in the East India Company.

Cassington Mill, near the overgrown sign on the Thames that announces the end of the line for the Evenlode, paid 175 eels a year in rent, according to the Domesday Book. Now, however, there are few Evenlode eels about, their numbers having fallen to about one per cent of what they once were, according to experts at the Environment Agency.

I gather this information from a small gem of a book called Sweet Evenlode (Wychwood Press) by Oxford writer and journalist Godfrey Hodgson, which meanders like its subject through a lifetime in West Oxfordshire, reminiscing here about interesting acquaintances living in the valley, there about social change, with every now and then, hitting hard rocks of solid statistics along with well researched historical fact.

For instance, we learn that Jane Austen visited her rich cousin at Adlestrop three times and that Edward Thomas made this entry in his notebook at least a year before he wrote that famous poem: "Then we stopped at Adlestrop, thro' the willows cd be heard a chain of blackbirds' songs at 12.45 & one thrush & no man seen . . ." He was killed in 1917.

We learn that John Buchan, who bought the manor at Elsfield, wove the West Oxfordshire countryside into his novel Mr Standfast about a year after Edward Thomas's train stopped at Adlestrop. He wrote there of a "revelation" experienced by his hero Hannay: "I had a vision of what we were fighting for, what we were all fighting for. It was peace, deep and holy and ancient, peace older than the oldest wars."

Contemplative walks of long ago are conjured up here. But Mr Hodgson, writing after a spell in hospital, is not sentimental, or chauvinist, or nationalistic: simply thoughtful.

But back to facts, nosed out by Mr Hodgson: we learn that the Duke of Marlborough, who possesses more land along the Evenlode than anyone else, still owns 11,500 acres, of which 5,500 acres are let to tenant farmers. He also owns 1,550 acres of woodland and 128 cottages and houses.

Then there is wonderment: we wonder with Mr Hodgson about historian Macaulay's comments on the first duke, whom he dubbed a "prodigy of turpitude".

And as for that railway line, now called the Cotswold Line. It was originally called the Oxford, Worcester and Wolvercote Line. Still today all its bridges are marked OWW which some 19th-century wag decided Old Worse and Worse.

Moaning about trains is nothing new!