Thames Path: Oxford-Eynsham: Saturday 27 August 2011
Right here with just some minor adjustments is the publish I wrote in 2011, nonetheless obtainable with many extra photos on My London Diary, although I’ve added some helpful hyperlinks right here.
The query most individuals studying this might be asking is ‘The place the **** is Eynsham?’ and happily the reply is ‘Not very removed from Oxford‘ and one among its important points of interest is the great bus service taking you again there.
Nevertheless had you been studying this website online a thousand or so years in the past (difficult as a result of I don’t assume these Anglosaxons have been too sizzling on web protocols and though the avian-based RFC1149 would have been technically possible it was solely printed in 1990, roughly as Tim Berners-Lee was inventing the online) the query you might need been asking was ‘The place the **** is Oxford‘, a slightly much less important place till it bought the concept of a having a college.
As we discovered after we bought there, Eynsham had an enormous abbey, although the one actual signal we noticed remaining of it have been its fish ponds. However that was on the finish of our stroll, shortly earlier than I mutinied and made for the Purple Lion.
Our household stroll began on the station and we made our solution to the Thames, the place our Thames Path e-book (the official information, now in a brand new version, however others can be found) appeared to indicate the trail on the flawed aspect of the river.
Years in the past, earlier than we had a Thames path, I bear in mind getting fairly excited concerning the draft proposal for it, and even making a couple of options. In fact there was a tow path subsequent to the river besides the place some much less scrupulous riparian house owners had stolen and enclosed elements of it, but it surely did have an unlucky behavior of leaping from one aspect to the opposite at distant locations the place till across the Nineteen Thirties there had been a ferry.
Now I’m not so positive that such ‘long-distance paths‘ are such a good suggestion. They encourage folks to method strolling in a really aggressive and one-dimensional approach, ‘bagging‘ levels of the route in what are extra route marches than satisfying.
My form of stroll tends to go a fairly a gradual tempo total, stopping to take a look at and {photograph} issues that take my curiosity, diverting from the trail to take a look at what appear fascinating options on the map, not worrying about getting any specific distance. However after all outdoors town there are specific practicalities about discovering a bus cease or station from the place you will get house. My companions are often slightly extra heading for the aim, and you will note the backs of two figures within the center distance in a few of my photos, although not me operating after them to catch up.
However not less than this was a reasonably quick stroll, and we did have time to go searching Eynsham, a big village with round 5 pubs and a publish workplace, in addition to a heritage path across the intensive former abbey grounds which we did round half of. The others have been additionally eager to search for traces of the previous railway, a particularly thirst-making and largely fruitless activity, serving largely as a reminder of how short-sighted we have been in abandoning way-leaves on what may by now have appeared a really appropriate route for light-weight group transport.
The ultimate image was taken from the highest of the bus on my approach house because it went over Swinford Bridge, with a view alongside the Thames to Eynsham Lock. The bridge is an area visitors bottleneck, with lengthy queues on the rush hour holding up visitors for round 20 minutes or extra as motorists need to cease to pay the toll. Though the toll for automobiles is simply 5p – money solely – that nets round £175,000 a 12 months and, underneath the Act of Parliament granted in 1767 the revenue from it is freed from revenue tax – which had not then been invented.
A protracted marketing campaign (not less than since 1905) by customers continues to get the toll abolished, most lately with a petition to their native MP, a Mr David Cameron, who you assume may be capable of do one thing about it. However the proprietor of the bridge, who purchased it in 2009 for £1.08 million stays nameless, and will nicely be a substantial donor to Conservative social gathering funds.
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Tags: Abbey, Alice, Alice in Wonderland, bus, cows, Dodgson, Eynsham, Eynsham Abbey, fish ponds, Godstow Abbey, horses, Lewis Carroll, long-distance path, Oxford, peter Marshall, Port Meadow, Purple Lion, RFC1149, River Thames, Swinford Bridge, Thames Path, toll bridge, visitors bottleneck, Stroll
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