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.
The
Trap-Grounds is a three acre reed bed, a rare fragment of a type of
wetland habitat once common around Oxford. This pocket of urban
wilderness supports a rich diversity of wildlife. At least 35
species of birds and 21 species of butterfly breed on the Trap
Grounds, along with moths, dragonflies, bats, grass snakes, water
voles and shrews, lizards, slow worms, stoats, weasels, muntjac
deer and foxes.
The name (in use since at least 1790) may derive from the practice
of trapping birds here, or the making of eel traps from willow
withies, or the parking of pony traps during the 18th century races
on Port Meadow, or the dumping of night-soil from the traps or
privies of university colleges, or it may be a corruption of the
designation 'Extra Parochial' which denotes the sites exemption
from the payment of church tithes.
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.