More exploring

Saturday 17 Oct

I did some more exploring today, in and around Oxford.

In the morning I made my way to the little village of Binsey, which is close enough to Oxford to be suburbia and yet it has a sense of middle-of-nowhere-ness. In fact, the parish church, St Margaret’s, doesn’t even have electricity, which means there are brass lamps hanging from the ceiling. I can imagine it being rather cool in winter.

There was a cache here, that highlighted the existence of a well in the yard that was supposed to be miraculous. Henry VIII apparently consumed some of the water in search of a male heir, the results of which may be indicative of (a) the well’s miraculousness or (b) Henry’s worthiness for miracles (or (c) none of the above!). The well was also known to Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell and probably formed the inspiration for the story told by the dormouse in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland about three sisters who lived at the bottom of a well living on treacle (such healing wells are known as “treacle wells”). The well is currently rather unprepossessing: there are steps leading down to a hole about half a metre in diameter with a pointed arch over it, and the murky water is looking decidedly unmiraculous (oh me of little faith!).

In the late morning, after I’d returned from this little excursion, Anne, John and I headed south on our bikes along the Thames Path, down towards Iffley Lock. There weren’t many people fishing today, but I have seen them on other days fishing from the river banks. The amazing thing is that some of the fishing poles are 8-10m long (if truth be told, I suspect the poles are only about 8m long, but if I say 10m you’ll get the right idea about just how huge they are). There were, however, plenty of rowers out in force on the river (mostly female, and mostly in the early stages of learning how to row), and there was also a lovely small steam launch/dinghy puttering along (along with a flotilla of geese).

Just above Iffley Lock we stopped at the Isis Farmhouse, a riverside pub accessible only from the river and the Thames Path. It’s a curious spot, being rather dilapidated but with a rustic charm, and here we had a simple lunch and some yummy cake for dessert. We then went a little further south to Iffley Lock where there is an interesting bridge. This is known as the Mathematical Bridge, being a copy of the similarly named and constructed bridge in Cambridge. It features a semi-circular arch with tangential beams. The photo shows that the bridge was trebly mathematical while we were there: that’s John and Anne standing on it (I’m taking the photo). There was a cache associated with the bridge (a small one, magnetically attached to the bridge), and so now Anne and John know a little more about my weird hobby.

Anne and John then headed home for the afternoon, while I made my way westward to do a little more exploring (a task made more challenging for a cyclist because the A34 rips across the most direct routes).

One of the highlights of my afternoon was to wander around in Bagley Wood. There were some very interesting patches of forest, and I could get a sense of the sorts of places that might have inspired Tolkein and Lewis in their writings of Middle Earth and Narnia. I found one of the caches easily enough, but was totally thwarted at the second (apparently it is a sneaky one). I then made my way back to the overpass (I thought about doing a quick dash across the A34 but the volume and speed of the traffic probably would have made this a quick splat across the A34), and walked through the woods on the Kennington side and found another cache.

I visited a couple of other interesting spots on the way home, again cache-motivated but with nice views. Unfortunately the day’s weather had become dull by this stage and so the photos aren’t worth much.

Larger and prettier extra photos can be viewed by clicking here.