{"id":2501,"date":"2014-11-15T23:10:11","date_gmt":"2014-11-16T04:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/?p=2501"},"modified":"2014-11-15T23:10:11","modified_gmt":"2014-11-16T04:10:11","slug":"river-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/2014\/11\/15\/river-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"River Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

On my second day in England, I returned to Oxford and took a boat tour of the Thames River (the waterway also known in that city as the Isis).<\/p>\n

I walked down to the tour place<\/a> a bit early and bought my ticket, and then walked around until the departure time.\u00a0 Here’s the river, seen from Folly Bridge, right near the tour boat launch:<\/p>\n

\"thamesfolly\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I walked down near the river and saw a bunch of geese feasting on bread someone had thrown there:<\/p>\n

\"thamesgeese1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"thamesgeese2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I walked south from there, away from the river, and in front of a house I saw some birds I did not recognize.\u00a0 I found out later that these are magpies:<\/p>\n

\"magpie1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"magpie2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I noticed a path that went off the road alongside some athletic fields, and saw that the sign indicated that it was a public path that went through to the river.\u00a0 So I walked through there and came out on the Thames Path<\/a>.\u00a0 Looking up river there were several University boathouses:<\/p>\n

\"boathouses1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s the view downriver from the same spot:<\/p>\n

\"thamespath1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I followed the path upriver, back toward the tour place.\u00a0 On the way, I saw several houseboats that were moored by the side:<\/p>\n

\"thameshouseboats\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of which had a lot of plants on them:<\/p>\n

\"houseboatplants\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Apparently there are a lot of river sections where the public can moor for a few days at a time.<\/p>\n

Here’s a view of a park across the river:<\/p>\n

\"thamespark\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I got back to the boat launch and soon was able to get on board the small boat.\u00a0 There were about 8 other passengers, and fortunately there was a canopy over most of the boat, as it was quite sunny.<\/p>\n

First the boat headed downriver.\u00a0 Here’s a building near Folly Bridge:<\/p>\n

\"thamesbldg1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We passed the boathouses I had seen from the shore, and a few more.\u00a0 These are the oldest ones, apparently:<\/p>\n

\"boathouses2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We turned around at Iffley Lock and then headed upriver for the major portion of the tour.<\/p>\n

This included going through a lock, where the boat pilot got out and operated the controls to close the doors and fill the lock.<\/p>\n

Here we are heading into the lock:
\n\"thameslock1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"thameslock2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As the water filled it, there was a duck floating there with us:<\/p>\n

\"thamesduck\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And here is the lock open for us to continue upriver:<\/p>\n

\"thameslock3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At one point, a person on the shore was taking our picture.\u00a0 I tried to get a photo of him while he was doing so, but I wasn’t quick enough:<\/p>\n

\"thamesphotog\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some other views on the sides of the river:<\/p>\n

\"thamestrees\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"thameswoodbridge\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The north end of the tour was at Port Meadow, which is common land in Oxford (and also a floodplain).\u00a0 There were a whole lot of birds there:<\/p>\n

\"portmeadow1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Also horses grazing and drinking:<\/p>\n

\"thameshorses\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That swan kept dunking its head when I wanted to take its picture.<\/p>\n

I did get a closeup of this heron, though:<\/p>\n

\"thamesheron\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s a building I thought was neat looking as we were headed back downriver:<\/p>\n

\"thamesbldg2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

An obelisk along the bank:<\/p>\n

\"thamesobelisk\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think this is a train bridge:<\/p>\n

\"thamestrainbridge\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After the tour ended, I walked back toward the train station, happening to pass Oxford Castle<\/a> on the way:<\/p>\n

\"oxfcastle1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"oxfcastle2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And this is a canal that flows through the city:<\/p>\n

\"oxfcanal\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I took the train back to Didcot, where I collected my luggage from my friend’s place, and then boarded another train to head to London, where I would spend the next 5 days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On my second day in England, I returned to Oxford and took a boat tour of the Thames River (the waterway also known in that city as the Isis). I walked down to the tour place a bit early and bought my ticket, and then walked around until the departure time.\u00a0 Here’s the river, seen … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2530,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions\/2530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}