Punting in Oxford
Push off from Magdalen Bridge into the green quiet of the Cherwell and glide beneath the willows.
Push off from Magdalen Bridge into the green quiet of the Cherwell and glide beneath the willows.
Some of our favourite days from the cottage barely qualify as plans. We pack a blanket and a cold bottle, drive down into Oxford, and spend an unhurried afternoon pushing a flat-bottomed boat along the Cherwell with no real destination in mind. Punting is the sort of thing that sounds grander than it is. You collect a long pole and a shallow wooden punt, push off from the bank, and within minutes the traffic and the tourists have fallen away behind a screen of willows. It is one of those rare activities that improves the less seriously you take it, and it is the outing we press on almost everyone who comes to stay.
The city has been renting punts out for well over a century, and the boatyards have the whole thing down to a friendly ritual. You do not need to book a self-hire punt in advance; you turn up, leave a deposit, pay by the hour and step gingerly aboard. If none of you fancies wielding the pole, a chauffeured trip lets you sit back while a guide (often a student with a good line in college gossip) does the work. The season runs roughly from mid-February through to late November, weather permitting, but high summer is the moment to aim for, when the days are long, the willows are heavy and the light on the honey-coloured stone is at its best.
There are three main places to pick up a boat, and each opens onto a slightly different stretch of river.
Punting is genuinely easy once you stop overthinking it, and briefly comic before that. You stand at the back, drop the pole to the riverbed, push, and then trail it behind you as a rudder. The one golden rule everyone learns the hard way: if the pole sticks in the mud, let it go rather than be hauled in after it. Bring something to sit on, keep small children and phones away from the edge, and give yourselves a full hour or two rather than a rushed thirty minutes. Late afternoon into early evening is the loveliest time, once the day-trippers have thinned out and the river goes quiet and golden.
The cottage sits near Ledwell in north Oxfordshire, and Oxford is roughly a thirty-five to forty minute drive, a little under fifteen miles down towards the ring road. Parking in the centre is famously awkward, so we usually leave the car at one of the city's park-and-ride sites and let the bus drop us near the colleges. Make a full outing of it: wander the colleges and lanes of Oxford in the morning, take your punt across the warmest part of the afternoon, then finish with an early supper. For something more countryside than city, The Trout at Wolvercote sits right on the water a short way upstream and makes a lovely place to end the day.
“We take everyone who visits for a punt. Half the fun is watching someone lose the pole for the first time. Pack a bottle of something nice and give yourselves the whole afternoon.”
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.