Oxford Foglift

My Scholarship entry - Oxford Foglift

UNITED KINGDOM | Wednesday, 19 November 2014 | Views [168] | View Larger Image

Sleepy houseboats filled with sleeping people float up and down in the Thames; they brush up and creak against the path. A bright red boat is tethered to a mailbox, and sitting in it, on it, and around it are its homeowners - a clowder of river cats.

Somewhere between the abandoned Godstow Abbey and the train station is a footpath. Judging by the number of bikes a hiker must avoid being flattened by, it might be called a repurposed highway.
A student tells me that Lewis Carroll went picnicking with Alice in wonderland along this path.
Godstow Abbey, the burial place of Henry II's famed mistress Rosamund Clifford, was repossessed by Oxford University back in the 1920s. After it was damaged by the Civil War, locals looted its stone. The surrounding area is alleged to be haunted. On a day like this, in the fog, it seems like less of a fiction.
Today the footpath snakes along the Thames River behind a row of quiet terraced houses to nowhere in particular. I decided to follow it.

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The path opens up to a clearing, bookended by a lock and a viaduct. Just over the bridge is an enormous expanse of land. Legend has it that Alfred the Great bestowed this pasture (today, Port Meadow) on the Freeman of Oxford as a war spoil. Nearly nine hundred years after the Domesday Book, wild horses still graze in the fog. I clatter over the bridge, open the gate, and go in.

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Oxford Foglift

My Scholarship entry - Oxford Foglift

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