Biking the Isis

There is a river that runs through Oxford. Before it enters Oxford, it is called the Thames. When it leaves Oxford, it is called the Thames. But in Oxford, it's called the Isis. Why that is, I'm not sure, beyond some sort of snobbery. Either way, it's a nice place to take a bike ride.

We decided to try biking down the river path a couple weekends ago, soon after flooding had become a problem around Oxfordshire. It was the first glimpse of sunshine we'd had in a whle, so we felt we had to take advantage. However, we only got about as far as Iffley because the field we were supposed to go through was flooded with about a foot of water!

Here's Paul on his bike, with typical English winter weather in the background. We have a partly sunny day about once per week, and this was one of them.


This picture gives you an idea of what the bike path looks like as you head south from Oxford. You pass by a lot of cute villages and a few pubs!


At certain points along the river, there are lots of swans and ducks. Normally swans are territorial, but when children are regularly brought along to throw bread at them, they congregate and pay more attention to the good eats than they do to each other. Here we saw a family of swans (you can see the gray teenage ones).


And here's a neat house with a thatched roof that we saw in Iffley.


Also in Iffley is an old Norman church, built in 1170, called St Mary's. Neither of us had ever seen a Norman church before, and we had no idea it was anything all that special until we went home and googled it!


So that's kind of what it's like living around here. The more you wander around, the more random old things you find.