The Grand Tour: Oxford and the Thames

Friday, July 12, 2019

It’s the beginning of the end already - as I write this there are only a few days of the trip left. But for now, let’s enjoy looking back.

Day 15, 16: Oxford

It was highly agreeable to stop in Oxford for a couple days. Of course it was nice to be in Oxford, but it was also nice just to stop. I'd been on the go for two weeks straight, so not moving was unfamiliar but welcome. And the mooring I found was quiet and close enough to the centre of town to get there in ten minutes on my bike. I spent two solid days sightseeing, shopping and relaxing and it was great.

I started with a proper fry up breakfast on Saturday and then went straight to the Pitt Rivers Museum, which I've been to before, but was well worth additional attention. It's very much in the same vein as the Tring museum from Day 4.

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Case after case, crammed into a purpose built room with two mezzanine levels.

Saturday was Alice Day in Oxford, an annual celebration of the Lewis Caroll classics. Lewis - real name Charles Dodgson - wrote the books while living in Oxford. Not to be confused with C. S. Lewis, who came along later and was a fellow at Magdalen College. C.S. Lewis also hung around with J.R.R. Tolkein (Fellow of Pembroke and Merton Colleges) and other writers as part of the Inklings literary group.

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Apparently the Inklings spent a lot of time in this pub, so naturally I checked it out. (Pub #14 of the trip, for those keeping score)

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I can confirm that yes indeed, it does come in pints.

I also went to the History of Science Museum, which has lovely displays of old scientific instruments, and this:

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Einstein’s equations from a 1931 lecture outlining “a relatively simple model to explain the expansion of the universe.”

And I visited Blackwell's Books, which includes the Norrington room - the largest single room selling books in the world, with three miles of shelving. If I was driving the boat along those shelves it would take more than an hour. I even managed a run on Saturday, heading downriver to see what was to come. Then I finished the night with a very nice dinner at a nearby pub (of course).

Sunday was another full day, taking in a sampling of the Ashmolean Museum, the Weston library - part of the Bodleian, and a choral evensong service at Christ Church Cathedral.

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Lovely cathedral, nice music, and it’s right across the street from a good ice cream parlour. Win Win Win.

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Plus how can you not love this quote from the Order of Service?

Yes, Oxford was an excellent interlude. I even got a few souvenirs and did some Christmas shopping. By Monday though, I was ready for the next stage.

Day 17: Oxford to Clifton Hampden

Day 17 marked the return of Piran, for the momentous move onto the River Thames. We had one last narrow canal lock to negotiate right at the start of the day, and then we were there - the Thames!

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First moments on the Thames, just after Isis lock

Being on the river is very different than being on the canals. For one thing, I had to buy a £58 licence to be on the Thames for the next week. But that £58 helps pay for… lock-keepers! The locks on the Thames are much much bigger, and all have mechanised gates and paddles - no more winding up paddles and man-handling gates open and shut. Press a button and it all happens. Also, they are staffed by professional lock keepers between about 9am and 6pm, so you really just have to show up and keep control of your boat in the lock. It’s quite a luxury.

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Here's an example of the push-button mechanised controls. Also the manual winch handle for if there's no power.

The lock keepers are generally super friendly and helpful, which is lovely. Each lock has a little hut which acts as the lock keeper’s office, and some have lock keeper’s cottages nearby where they live while they’re working the lock. It’s very pleasing to know that there are still people in the world who fill out the “Occupation” part of forms with things like “Lock Keeper” or “Shepherd” or "Barber Surgeon". (They still have those, right?)

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The lock keepers at Abingdon must surely win some kind of prize for this sign.

The Thames is also much much wider than any canal, which at first felt odd but now feels very comfortable. While I was carefully nudging through narrows on the Oxford Canal, on the Thames there’s room to do donuts. And there’s more traffic, mostly NOT narrowboats. Narrowboats really are creatures of the canal - the river is full of much sleeker craft that move faster, and look posher and generally make me and the Lucky Nickel feel a bit out of place.

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See how wide? Oh, and see how relaxing when there's someone else available for some of the driving? (Aside to all those people I invited on the trip who didn't come... this could have been you.)

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There was also this lunch stop, with an overly generous Ploughman's Lunch the leftovers of which were still going at the end of the next day. At the Isis Farmhouse, pub #15

It was a pleasing but reassuringly uneventful first day on the river, and we moored for the night at a campsite at tiny village of Clifton Hampden. That's something else that's different about the Thames. On the canal the default is that you can moor anywhere along the towpath, unless it specifically says you can't. On the Thames it's the opposite - most of the riverbank is privately owned so you see a lot of "No Mooring" signs. And when you do find a place often you have to pay for it. At the campsite a man trundled over in a golf cart not long after we moored up and collected £10 for the overnight mooring, though that did include use of the campsite facilities. And it was a very short walk to the pub (#16). Still, I'm finding the mooring stressful. Even just pulling over to boil the kettle for my mid-morning coffee break is tricky.

Stats: 14 miles, 7 locks, 2.5lmph. I'm surprised we didn't get a bigger boost in pace from the downriver current.


Day 18: Clifton Hampden to Reading

Started the day with a swim! Piran's suggestion, as he wanted to tick the box of swimming in the Thames. I'll skip the photos of him being menaced by a swan who made a bee-line (swan-line?) for him once he got in the water. I suppose I could have poked at it with a barge pole, but I was busy gathering photographic documentation.

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Instead, here's me in a Lucky Nickel first -swimming off the boat! (Well, second. Piran went first. It was his idea after all.)

After we both swam (one at a time, with the other on camera/swan duty) we made our way to the local village shop where we picked up sausage rolls and fresh bread and local beer and a few other treats, to be sure we were well-provisioned for the day ahead.

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Top notch sausage rolls and friendly shop keeper who opens at 6:30am on weekdays to catch the early commuters.

The level of diesel was getting a bit low so I tried to stop at a marina along the way, but that's something else that's different on the Thames. Most of the boats here are river cruisers - big white plastic or fiberglass motor boats that can turn on a dime. The marina I stopped at had its diesel pumps squeezed between two jutting out jettys, meaning I had to try to back in to get there, like reversing into a nose-in parking spot. Now there are some narrowboat people who are skilled at reversing a narrowboat. I am not among them. After a couple attempts (including one where the pointy end of one of those river cruisers ended up perilously close to my kitchen window) I gave up. It also didn't help that there was a patio full of people at a nearby restaurant examining my every move. I had a jerry can of fuel in the bow - it just wasn't worth it.

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Instead, you get a look at probably the least accessible post box I've ever seen, set into a wall below a rail line and above a water line. For the use of boaters and abseiling train conductors I guess.

We finished the day in Reading, after picking up a couple extra passengers in the form of Piran's friends and relations. His niece and her boyfriend hopped on a mile or two outside the city and then hung around for drinks and nibbles on the boat after we managed to secure a prime central location within striking distance of a much more accessible diesel point on Fry's Island.

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The hitchhikers. And more incentive for visiting the boat. Cheese! (Not pictured but also present: prosecco!)

Stats: 24 miles, 6 locks, 3.75 lmph. That river current, and the mechanised locks must have given us a real boost.

Thus ended Day 18. Piran departed for the train station with his ride-alongs, and I settled in for another stretch alone on the boat for the final push back to London.

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