HFF 4 Apr 2025

Happy Fence Friday, All

Another Oxford photo.....now there's a surprise :-)))

This time it is the Oxford Canal :-)


I should really know which lock this is :-) After some investigation and realising it is Bridge No. 243 in the background I feel 99.9% certain that this is Isis Lock :-)

Not this part of the canal, but I am pretty familiar with the bottom of the Oxford Canal quite bit further North !!! :-)) We had many narrowboat holidays with quite a few on the Oxford Canal. On one occasion, we ran aground. I thought I could free us by using the pole you get with the boat to push us back to the middle of the canal !! Well, the pole went one way, and I went the other straight into the canal between the boat and the bank !!! :-))) Helen panicked, thought I was going to drown, and disappeared into the inside of the boat :-) Fortunately, I was pretty much able to sit up in the water with my head above the surface :-)) I was very wet and smelly :-))) And, I am still here to tell the story :-)))

From Wikipedia -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Canal
"The Oxford Canal is a 78-mile (126 km) narrowboat canal in southern central England linking the City of Oxford with the Coventry Canal at Hawkesbury (just north of Coventry and south of Bedworth) via Banbury and Rugby. Completed in 1790, it connects to the River Thames at Oxford, and links with the Grand Union Canal, which it is combined with for 5 miles (8 km) between to the villages of Braunston and Napton-on-the-Hill.The canal is usually divided into the North Oxford Canal (north of Napton, via Rugby to Hawkesbury Junction near Coventry) and the South Oxford Canal, south of Napton to Banbury and Oxford. The canal was for about 15 years the main canal artery of trade between the Midlands and London, via its connection to the Thames, until the Grand Union Canal (then called the Grand Junction Canal) took most of the London-bound traffic following its opening in 1805. The North Oxford Canal (which had been straightened in the 1830s) remained an important artery of trade carrying coal and other commodities until the 1960s; the more rural South Oxford Canal however became something of a backwater, especially following the opening of the Grand Junction Canal, and it faced closure proposals in the 1950s. Since the end of regular commercial goods carriage on the canal in the 1960s, it has gained a new use as a leisure resource, and become used primarily for narrowboat pleasure boating.The Oxford Canal traverses Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and east Warwickshire through broad, shallow valleys and lightly rolling hills; the canal's route northeast and then northwest forms part of the Warwickshire ring."