The Oxford
Canal Walk follows the picturesque Oxford Canal as it meanders
slowly through 77 miles of classic scenery, much of which has
barely changed in centuries. Passing through the quiet rural
landscape of the south Midlands. It passes beside 43 locks,
numerous wooden lift bridges, cast iron bridges and through one
tunnel. There are few hills to speak of - the canal summit is only
400 feet above the start at Oxford. At one time it was the
main transport route from the midlands to the south of England and
it is now one of the most beautiful and popular cruising
canals.
Across the
bridge you will find Stratfield Brake. Rare breed Dexter cattle,
brimstone butterflies, redwings, little ringed plovers and herons
have all made their home three miles north of Oxford’s dreaming
spires at a new pocket-sized urban wood and wetland.
The newly created woodland, grassland and wetland includes a
network of small ponds, islands and reed beds attracting plovers,
tern, water voles, reed buntings, warblers, dragonflies and heron.
Existing woodland and newly planted hedgerows act as a magnet to a
wide variety of wildlife while Dexter cattle have been introduced
to graze the grassland as part of traditional site
management.
The cache is a small Tupperware type container that may require a
small amount of agility to retrieve.
As my employer has decided that it would be a good idea to
move the whole organisation to Bristol, the Phillimore's (Mad H@ter
and Muddy Legs) will be moving on to pastures new and some fresh
caches. Unfortunately this will mean that it will become difficult
for us to maintain our Oxfordshire caches, so we will therefore be
gradually archiving the majority of them. We shall start our
program of collecting the caches and archiving them in the new
year, but as we have one or two caches out there this will not be a
five minute program! If you would particularly like to find this
cache before it is archived please get in touch and we will try and
hold off archiving it.