River Cherwell

thought I'd take a look at the River Cherwell, since the Tourist office claimed Banbury was the "Capital of the Cherwell Valley".

Well, there's the canal, looking like God made it last week. Gaily painted narrow boats (not barges - noses go up in the air if you call them barges) rise and fall in neat little locks, and then glide off between neatly clipped lawns. The English explore their country in comfort, never too far away from sustenance. It's nice, but it isn't a river.

Refer to a map, refer to a compass, it should be right here.

And so it is; there's the beautiful Cherwell, trickling through a grimy concrete culvert, choked with weeds and refuse, forlorn and forgotten, exiting to oblivion under the railway station. How sad.

Cock Horse

All Puffed Out