AN OXFORDSHIRE GP is retiring after nearly four decades of serving the same community.

Dr Richard Lynch-Blosse has been a doctor at Clifton Hampden Surgery, in the village near Abingdon, for 37 years but will be leaving in the new year.

His last day will be on December 31, ahead of countdown to many new beginnings.

He said: "I have loved it.

"I see hundreds of patients but now I am retiring after 37 years.

"It’s been a privilege to have been involved in the community for all of that time.

"I have looked after some families for 30 years and generations upon generations.

"It’s a very rewarding career."

Dr Lynch-Blosse is a senior practitioner at the surgery, which has been running for around 100 years, and became the head of the practise in 2008.

He told this paper he had always planned to be a GP.

He graduated from his studies in 1978 and did his ‘house jobs’.

He then joined the Army as a doctor, through a medical cadet scheme.

He said: “I stayed with the Army going to Germany, Northern Ireland and then the UK.

“I left in 1985, then I started in the Clifton Hamden Surgery.”

Dr Lynch-Blosse said he had enjoyed being part of the tight-knit community which had helped keep relationships between patients and the staff.

“I have loved it – everyday’s very different. You can have people walking in with broken legs and you can be working with hospitals to send somewhere else.”

Aside from treating patients, the doctor is a big fan of vintage cars.

He said: “My plans for retirement will be engineering and looking after a classic car.

“I have an old Bentley.”

He said he had taken his classic car to conventions at backdrops like Blenheim Palace.