Five teenagers, aged 16 to 18, who work at Bicester Village, completed a fast track bespoke retail programme that also bagged them a nationally recognised qualification.

At a special ceremony Bicester’s MP Tony Baldry presented the group with City and Guilds certificates — equivalent of four grade A to C GCSEs.

The five have also been offered a year’s contract to work at stores at the designer outlet centre.

National trainer and co-ordinator Helen Hedley said: “The programme has been a true success — all the apprentices passed all three component parts of the apprenticeship programme in record time”

Pictured from left are Katie Thomson, Ms Hedley, Robert Manley, Mr Baldry, Kirsty Fulford, Matthew Gray and Sophie Moore.

The competition, supported by the Church of England’s Shrinking the Footprint environmental campaign, is being held to mark Creation Tide. It invites people to send in original photos, poems or prayers that best express the spot where they feel most inspired by creation, be it their own back garden or a popular country estate.

David Shreeve, the Church of England’s national environment adviser, said: “So often taken for granted, there are many special places where we can find inspiration and by entering this competition you can say ‘thank you’, which is part of the Shrinking the Footprint ethos, reminding us just how inspiring our world is and how we need to conserve it.”

The diocese is running the Inspired by Creation competition throughout September on its website, earthingfaith.org, which was launched recently to help people connect their spirituality with the earth.

Matt Freer, Environment Officer for Oxford Diocese, said he wanted people to share the place “where they find inspiration and a connection with God”.

To help people with their ideas, the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev John Pritchard, has shared his favourite place as a spot in the Lake District.

Bishop Pritchard said: “Many people have a favourite piece of holy ground, somewhere where the veil between heaven and earth seems very thin, whether or not they are fully paid up Christians.

“Mine is in the Lake District where you look down Wastwater to the great mountains of Scafell Pike, Yewbarrow and Pillar. This is where time stands still for me and I am put gently but firmly in my place before the beauty and scale of God. I could look at that view for weeks and never exhaust it.”

Tony Baldry, MP for north Oxfordshire and the Second Church Estates Commissioner, has nominated the churchyard at St Peter’s Church, Burnham, where his childhood mentor is buried.

“Every day for thirty years Miss Winch would walk from Burnham to Dropmore and back to teach in the church school. Ten miles every day, in all weathers,” he said.

“It was a time when every child knew their catechism, the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis. And with the festivals and the seasons she would change the altar cloths.

“I think Miss Winch’s grave is a good place for the Second Church Estates Commissioner to give an account of himself to God.”

Canon Edmund Newell, Sub-Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, says: “It’s hard not to be inspired by creation. For me, it’s the sea that does it. It’s where I go to think, reflect, write and pray.”

The winning photos and words will be made available through packs of postcards and other resources. Prizes include a selection of books and energy saving devices.

Club president Liz Yardley and member are pictured with an emergency Shelterbox tent in Sheep Street, collecting cash yesterday.

The UN says the country’s worst flooding in nearly a century has now affected up to 20 million people and left at least 1,600 dead.

Earlier this year, Bicester Rotary collected enough cash to send seven Shelterboxes to people in Haiti after the devastating earthquake destroyed much of the island in January.

Each box contains a 10-person tent, blankets, mosquito nets, tools, cooking equipment, water purification tablets and water containers, and costs £490.

Ms Yardley said people had been donating generously to the Pakistan appeal, adding: “It’s very important we help these people because certainly the extremists will try to capitalise on the situation. They are human beings, brothers, sisters, parents and children. And it’s the children who are most at risk with waterborne diseases.”

Worldwide the Rotary organisation sent enough Shelter boxes to Haiti to help almost one million people, and equipped an emergency hospital.

Tom Rolt set up the Inland Waterways association back in 1946 which is thought to have help the canal network get back on its feet after the 2nd world war.

Tony Baldry unveiled the plaque last week at a ceremony by the Oxford canal

Tory Mr Baldry cycled from his home in Bloxham to meet Simon Pratt, regional director of sustainable transport charity Sustrans.

Mr Pratt, who lives in Bicester, challenged the MP to a tour of cycle and walkways to show him ‘exactly how unpleasant it is’.

The idea was to highlight how areas could be improved alongside planned development in the town centre and elsewhere.

Afterwards Mr Pratt said: “The ride went well, a great fact-finding visit for all parties.

“We visited all nine key ‘gateways’ to the town centre – mostly crossing points of major barriers, two railway lines and a main road.

“We looked at links to the town centre, Bicester Village, Bicester North and Bicester Town railway stations, schools and business parks.

“We also discussed the impact of proposed developments at the eco-town, south-west Bicester and the town centre.”

Mr Baldry said: “There are some issues about how we ensure integrated cyclepaths and networks across the town.

“I don’t think this is something which requires much money. In some places it requires improved signage, colour coding on roads, perhaps imaginatively marking cycle gateways in housing estates. There is clearly local expertise that can help make this happen.”

Mr Rolt and his wife Angela spent their honeymoon cruising the canals of England in the narrowboat Cressy in 1939, after setting off from Tooley’s boatyard in Banbury.

It led to him writing the classic book about inland waterways, Narrow Boat, in celebration of canals.

It also led to him setting up the Inland Waterways Association, of which he was the first secretary in 1946.

Mr Baldry said: “Britain’s canal system fell seriously into disrepair after the Second World War.

“Goods were being hauled either by rail, or increasingly by road, and the leisure use of our canal network hadn’t started to take off.

“It was Tom Rolt, an engineer and canal enthusiast, who did more than anyone to save England’s canal network, and who was responsible for the founding of the Inland Waterways Association.

“The Oxford Canal is an important asset locally and it is right that we remember the contribution of Tom Rolt.”

“In 1939, Tom Rolt started a historic 400 mile journey from Tooley’s Boat Yard in his wooden narrow boat, “Cressy”.

He cruised the canals of England and wrote a moving account, called “Narrow Boat”, which did much to remind people of the romance of the waterways and their potential.

Immediately after the Second World War Tom Rolt was instrumental in the establishment of the Inland Waterways Association which brought together volunteers keen to maintain our national canal heritage, and Tom Rolt probably did more than anyone to ensure that we still have a national canal network.

For Banbury, linear transports such as the canal, and then later the railway, enabled Banbury, which had been a classic rural market town, to become part of the semi-industrialised West Midlands, and that process then continued once the M40 was constructed.

In this centenary year of Tom Rolt’s birth, it is particularly appropriate that a blue plaque should be erected in his memory in Banbury, at Tooley’s Boat Yard where he started his historic journey in 1939, a journey that has just been re-created by Ron and Mary Heritage, of today’s Oxfordshire Branch of the IWA.”

There are a number of proposals in the town that will have an impact on cycling and walking, including changes to traffic movements in Market Square and the town centre redevelopment. Sustrans wants to take advantage of these opportunities to improve conditions for cycling and walking so that sustainable travel can become an obvious choice for residents within Bicester,

Simon Pratt, Regional Director for Sustrans, said: “We want to make it easier, safer and more accessible for people in Bicester to travel locally without having to resort to car use so we need to make sure that pedestrian and cycling needs are planned well and that more sustainable travel is an obvious every choice for getting about town. I hope this will be an informative experience for Mr Baldry and will help highlight sustainable transport needs within the area.”

Cherwell District Council was awarded 9.7 million pounds by the last Government to develop the eco-town to the north west of the existing settlement. A recent letter from housing minister Grant Shapps MP announces that up to a further £3 million is available.

This funding will be used, among other things, to change travel behaviour among current residents using a mix of building new and improved routes for walking and cycling and providing incentives and encouragement for people to leave their cars at home.

The new and improved routes will be built over the coming months, with a focus on links to the proposed first phase of the eco-town development off the Banbury Road. Sustrans is also working with Oxfordshire County Council on travel behaviour aspects of the programme.