Lots of people visit the area from overseas (Image: Getty)
The Oxfordshire countryside is filled with picturesque and interesting towns and villages.
A well-known in one of them seems to have eluded , whilst people visiting from flock to it.
Bicester is a market town and civil parish in the Cherwell district of Oxfordshire, northeast of the city.
It boasts an town centre, a garden town layout, independent and high-street shops and restaurants, as well as very handy railway connections to London, Birmingham and, of course, Oxford.
The town has an interesting past, as, during the English Civil War, Bicester was used as the headquarters of parliamentary forces.
Centuries before that, the West Saxons established a settlement in the area in the sixth century because Bicester lies close to the junction of two Roman roads.
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Bicester has an interesting history and exciting present (Image: Getty)
By the end of the 13th century, the town was the centre of a deanery – ecclesiastical entity of the Catholic Church – of 33 churches.
Nowadays, Bicester has become famous as a shopping destination.
Bicester Village, a nearly 550-yards-long luxury shopping street built beside the actual town, will celebrate its fourth decade of trading in 2025 as that it has increasingly become a retail destination for wealthy tourists.
The outlet has become famous in China, for example, as people reportedly post on the internet about their trip to Bicester Village.
Visitors boast of the bargains they’ve found, and the products they will fill their hold luggage with on the way home.
In Kuwait also, according to customer Ibrahim Alqhudari outside an Armani store, “everyone knows Bicester Village”.
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Bicester Village has become world-famous (Image: Getty)
Indeed, there was a point in time, before the -19 pandemic, when Bicester Village believed that only Buckingham Palace received more Chinese visitors in the UK than the Oxfordshire shopping destination.
A railway station, Bicester Village station, has even been built to serve the retail park.
It was among the only new London rail-links in a century. At the stop, there are announcements in Arabic and Mandarin.
John Durnin, the business director of Bicester Village, says that Britons are becoming a little more aware of the village.
Of the 7.3million annual visitors, he added, a third are currently from London, and a third from the surrounding Home Counties.
Of the other third, there are increasing numbers from the Middle East and India. Each person will spend six hours there on average.