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.
Port Meadow
is a large area of common land to the north and west of Oxford, The
meadow is an ancient area of grazing land, still used for horses
and cattle, and has never been ploughed. It is a typical English
flood meadow and is a favourite area for walking, with easy access
from the city of Oxford. Because the meadow has never been
ploughed, it contains well preserved archaeological remains, some
of which survive as residual earthworks. Of particular note are
several Bronze Age round barrows and an area of Iron Age
settlement. In the 17th and 18th centuries the meadow was used for
horse racing, and low stone bridges laid over washes and ditches
for this purpose still survive.
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.