Oxford Canal Walk – Leg 1
21 April 2016
The Oxford Canal runs from Oxford to Hawkesbury on the northern edge of Coventry. It starts in Oxford City centre next to the King’s Mill Stream. The first leg of my walk along its length covered 21km from the centre of Oxford to Dashwood Lock, roughly half way to Banbury.
Access: Start – Oxford city centre. Finish – walk out to Tackley, bus back to Oxford
At the start the main stream of the River Thames is a few hundred metres west, the other side of the railway. Heading north, the railway will be a companion until Fenny Compton, well north of Banbury, but the upstream Thames eases its way further west on the far side of Port Meadow. The first lock on the canal, Isis Lock, 400 metres from the start, gives access to the river. There is a second and final chance at 5km, where a lock into the Duke’s Cut links the two waterways and the upstream Thames takes a turn to the west and then south.
0 – 5km : To the edge of Oxford
The recently resurfaced towpath takes you up through Jericho into expensive North Oxford. The first mile or so is a popular commuter route into the city for pedestrians and cyclists. Beyond Aristotle Lane the surface reverts first to rough gravel, then plain earth (or mud if it’s wet). A forest of brutalist concrete columns supporting the A34 Western by-pass marks the end of the city.
5 – 10km : Oxford Ring Road – Kidlington
From the edge of Oxford to the start of Kidlington the canal goes through a no-man’s land of scrubby countryside, neither urban nor truly rural. Kidlington itself first appears as an area of neat development along the opposite (east) bank of the canal which forms the town’s boundary, with open land to the west (left). It seems a long couple of miles until you get close to the edge of Kidlington and pass through an industrial area on both sides of the canal before finally making it out into open countryside. It was here that I saw the first boat on the move, almost two hours from the start of the walk.
10 – 15km : Kidlington – Enslow (Gibraltar)
Almost immediately you come to the sign welcoming you to Thrupp, although the village itself is another 500m further on. You also come to the first canal-side pub, The Jolly Boatman, soon followed by the Boat Inn in Thrupp itself. Thrupp has a busy and thriving narrow boat basin for mooring and hiring, but even more importantly it has Annie’s Tea Room – a popular, even compulsory, coffee stop.
The OS map (164 1:50,000 or 180 1:25,000) is rather crowded here but seems to show the official Canal Walk continuing on the left of the canal. This path takes you briefly away from the canal bank but it is always in sight and you can rejoin the towpath, now on the right of the canal, via the bridge by the church in Shipton-on-Cherwell. Alternatively you could ignore the map and leave Thrupp basin by the well-maintained path alongside the moorings on the right of the canal.
Shortly after, at Shipton Weir Lock, the canal literally joins the River Cherwell. For about a kilometre the Cherwell is the canal until they split again at a sharp bend. But the two now stay close together until Cropredy north of Banbury, often with no more than a spit of land between the two. Once the channels separate the canal has switched from being on the Cherwell’s west bank to the east, where it stays until crossing the river again north of Aynho.
Enslow has a main road bridge, old wharves and modern depots, the Rock of Gibraltar pub and another boat basin and repair workshops.
15 – 21km : Enslow – Dashwood Lock
There are echoes in Enslow of earlier times when the canal and its wharves, the railway and the turnpike road made it a busy bustling place. The boat basin you pass soon after leaving is one enterprise that is still active. Passing a golf course on the right the next landmark is Pigeon’s Lock below the village of Kirtlington. The Three Pigeons used to be a pub but is now just a private house. A bench at the lock gave me a comfortable seat to have lunch.
Beyond the lock the canal passes alongside the old Kirtlington Quarry, now a nature reserve. Between the lock and the quarry a bizarre enterprise on the far bank offers canal-side café services from a series of canvas and plastic gazebos, plastic chairs and assorted chains of lights. You can only get to it from a canal boat or the lane from Pigeon’s Lock to Kirtlington.
Once past the old quarry I felt for the first time that I was well and truly out in the open countryside. Now and again a bridge connected one field to another, but apart from an occasional train heard but not seen over to the left all was quiet. Nowhere between Oxford and Banbury can be called remote, but it was starting to feel a bit that way.
My day’s plan was to walk as far as the bridge by Northbrook Lock, then take the footpath which passes over the bridge back into Tackley village to get the bus back to Oxford. Here I hit a snag. The towpath runs between the Cherwell on one side and the canal on the other. The bridge spans both. There is no access onto the bridge from the central towpath. Looking at the map the only alternative was to carry on to the next lock and take another footpath across the fields back to the path over Northbrook bridge. Luckily this only added about 2km to the day’s distance, but it did mean I missed the bus and had to wait almost an hour in Tackley for the next one.
Here’s my Viewranger track of Leg 1.