Tag: oxfordtails

Opinion is divided as to how to pronounce this. Townies (locals) tend to pronounce as written the rest of us pronounce it as Charwell, neither is wrong. As you stand with your back to the Univ Boat House there are college boat houses on the opposite side of the river Thames, or Isis on which we…

Carfax is the centre of town, the ground slopes down from all points, an important thing for mediaeval towns that depended on gravity and the rain to wash all their detritus to where the river would swill it all away. In the north it got washed into the moat, fish ponds or town ditch of…

In the dim and far off times Oh best Beloved, Oxford was not a great Centre of Learning elegantly spread along the well tempered shores of the Thames and Cherwell rivers but a set of squalid hovels and tawdry pubs running up a gravelly hill above a minor cattle ford over the swamp that stretched…

The stretch of the Thames that flows through Oxford is known as “The Thames or Isis” The Thames bit is easy, it probably means “dark” as when all said and done it does look pretty murky. Funnily enough the river these days is chemically very clean, supporting a decent variety of coarse fish; pike, roach and perch.…

Apart perhaps from your lap top and mobile phone, your best mechanical friend at Oxford is a bike. For Boaties I suggest, sine qua non. That the trip from College (indeed anywhere in town) to the Boat House is downhill is surely one of those acts of Divine Providence which would have convinced the mediaeval philosopher that…