oxford waterways

In the last few years, I have spent a lot of time on or alongside Oxford's waterways, including the river Cherwell, the Thames (also known as the Isis around here) and the Oxford Canal. With various combinations of children I have crossed, walked along, swum in, navigated with our canoe, and ice-skated on these waterways, so over time a few photos have accumulated.

Accordingly, I have now created a flickr set dedicated to Oxford's waterways, which you can check out on my flickr pages, or watch as a slideshow below.

Having gone through my 800+ flickr photos twice, I've now found 73 waterways pix, but I may still have missed a couple.

winter fun

Haven't done much blogging recently, too busy with ice skating down the river ... It really is a bit weird - after moving here in 1993 we waited 15 years for a proper winter and now we had three in a row (if a proper winter is defined by being able to skate outdoors on natural ice). Of the three cold winters, this was the first one to make the rivers Cherwell and Thames freeze over, and for a full week we were able to skate on a millstream of the river Cherwell.




Oh, and here's George Monbiot explaining why this may well be a symptom of global warming: That snow outside is what global warming looks like.

blue river

The river Cherwell as it appeared after a late shift at the library:

 

 

PS I uploaded a larger version of the photo to fotocommunity.

Parson's Pleasure

I spent most of the weekend on or by the river Cherwell, so I thought it was time for a blog entry to celebrate our short-walk holiday destination:

When we walk down to the river (which is not very far, and sometimes the river comes to us), we arrive at a place where two millstreams are diverted from the main course of the river which then goes down a weir, leaving two very elongated islands between the streams. The top end of the larger island is known as Parson’s Pleasure, and it is quite paradisiacal on the rare occasion when we have nice summer weather.



People go there to sunbathe or study, to have their picnics or foreplay, practice tightrope walking or taichi, or to go for a swim in defiance of the numerous signs warning them that the water is actually deep.

In a bygone era (not quite sure when, but in the mists of Oxford’s history, definitely before they built the cycle path which cuts across the islands), Parson’s Pleasure was one of the many riverside bathing places that are still marked on our old map, although nobody values the pleasures that you can get for free any more. Apparently this one was special because dons (i.e. male Oxford academics) used to do skinny-dipping here, while women were banned from the area. Local lore has it that one fine afternoon, a punt -- looking a bit like this one:



-- as I was saying, a punt full of undergraduates of both genders (can’t have been that long ago, then) lost its way and came gliding past the gloriously undressed academics. While most of them used their hands to shield their private parts, one don is said to have covered his face instead. Asked about this, he replied: “Oh, my students know me by my face!”

Well, I guess all this ended when female cyclists gained permission to ride past the area, some time around 1990, I think. But even without the naked dons it’s still a great place to be on a fine summer day …

navigating the backwaters of Oxford

Here's George Monbiot navigating the backwaters of Oxford:

"I pushed through rush-choked channels scarcely wider than my boat. I found backwaters no one had navigated for years. I stumbled across cannabis gardens and camouflaged shelters where fugitives lived. ... Abandoned behind railway fences, on the edge of playing fields, anonymously skirting business units, I found places I had never imagined possible, a parallel world."

I have made very similar discoveries in the last 3 years, it's quite amazing how a city can turn its back to its rivers. Apart from the main punting highway, it really is a parallel Oxford that one gets to see from the waterways.

Unlike GM, however, I don't trouble the fish (the rest of the article in Saturday's Guardian is about fishing). I only watch the wildlife (and have seen a kingfisher too!)

Here's a recent photo of our family canoe, taken upstream at the sunnymeade recreation ground.