Contemporary clothing label Vuori has launched a store at Bicester Village this week, its first store outside of London.

To mark the opening of the store, Bicester Village welcomed guests to an exclusive Pilates session before the shops even opened their doors.

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A Californian athleisure brand has opened its first ever discount store at Bicester Village this week, expanding on its three London stores (Image: Vuori)

Headquartered in San Diego and founded more than a decade ago, the brand has built a reputation for premium, performance-led leisurewear.

The new Bicester Village store will offer a carefully curated selection of bestsellers, including its Halo pants, the Vuori All The Feels collection and pieces from its popular Tom Holland golf collaboration.

Alongside those ranges, prices will be exclusive to the outlet, making it Vuori’s first UK discount boutique location and offering shoppers in Oxfordshire a chance to snap up the brand’s signature styles at lower prices than in its standard stores.

The Deep Purple star was once the owner of The Springs Resort & Golf Club in North Stoke near Wallingford – now part of the Talacre-based Darwin Escapes portfolio

The rock singer’s guitar-shaped swimming pool is no more, but resort manager Ben Scholes said in 2024 renovations and new facilities – including the 1893 spa and Ridgeway Restaurant – have proved incredibly popular with visitors from across the UK and beyond.

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Ian Gillan has other strong Oxfordshire connections – one night early in 1983 a meeting at a different hotel in the county led to him joining heavy rock contemporaries Black Sabbath.

He told Mojo magazine’s Hello Goodbye column that he joined Black Sabbath after getting a call from Tony Iommi suggesting a drink somewhere between Birmingham and Reading.

Ian Gillan said: “We decided upon The Bear at Woodstock. I was driving an orange two-litre Fiat Mirafiori, which got rear-ended by a guy who was chasing me and didn’t see me stop at a junction.

“I pulled up outside The Bear with a wreck of a car.

“I can’t remember anything else until the next day when I had a call from my manager Phil Banfield.

“He said something along the lines of ‘Ian if you are going to be making major career decisions you should be talking to me first’.

“Apparently we had a few drinks and they (Black Sabbath) offered me the gig and I, who had nothing else on at the time, agreed.”

Ian Gillan in 2010 (Image: Aleksey Chalabyan Xelgen)

Ian Gillan told Mojo Black Sabbath then went straight to the Manor Studio in Shipton-on-Cherwell to record the Born Again album.

The singer added that during the recording sessions he was camping in the grounds in a small tent.

“I like camping and cooking my breakfast over an open fire. After breakfast I would go into the studio to hear what they had put down and then start work on the lyrics,” he told the magazine.

The singer left Black Sabbath after about a year, as it was agreed he should make one album and tour for a year.

He added: “I was incompatible, our backgrounds were chalk and cheese, musically and geographically.”

Ian Gillan rejoined Deep Purple in 1984 and remains a member of the band.

Handheld spray devices will be given to officers, allowing them to spray a traceable forensic solution from up to 10 metres away.

The spray is designed to link an offender to the exact scene of an incident, helping police gather evidence.

Thames Valley police will also be using the tool, the BBC reported in April.

The Smart Tag technology can link individuals and vehicles to specific incidents through a unique, traceable code, relating to the pressurised canister it was sprayed from.

The crackdown comes amid Oxfordshire’s e-bike and e-scooter expansion planned.

The scheme, which currently focuses on city centre e-scooters, will broaden to include both e-bikes and e-scooters across a much wider region.

The central Oxfordshire area, covering Oxford, Botley, Kidlington, and possibly Abingdon and Wheatley, will be included in the expanded initiative.

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Lime bikes in Oxford (Image: Andy Ffrench)

E-bikes will also be introduced in the Science Vale area, around Didcot, Culham, and Harwell, as well as in Bicester.

Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) intends to appoint a single operator for both e-bikes and e-scooters throughout the county.

The expansion plan includes stricter parking controls, with hired scooters and bikes being parked only in mandatory parking locations pre-arranged by the council or the relevant landowner.

Many residents are wary of the plans, Lord Krebs speaking on the matter in the House of Lords said: “Where I live in Oxford, one of the problems with e-bikes and e-scooters is that all too often they’re dumped on the footpath, blocking the way particularly for mothers with prams and pushchairs and for elderly people and the sight impaired.”

Peter Hitchens, author and newspaper columnist, has consistently called for the licensing of e-scooters and e-bikes.

He said the e-scooters and e-bikes are an absolute “mess” and “everywhere” and said there has been an “experiment” for more than four years that nobody knows if it has succeeded or not.

Thames Valley Police, which covers Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, has already seized more than 100 illegal machines in recent operations and warned that privately owned e‑scooters used on public roads risk fines, penalty points and confiscation.

According to the report, Thames Valley officers use SmartTag to mark suspects and their vehicles during incidents, with anyone stopped later subject to UV checks to see if they carry the forensic code.

A briefing to the Thames Valley Police and Crime Panel states that the spray remains on skin, clothing and other surfaces for extended periods, strengthening the evidential link between offenders and specific crime scenes.