Tumbling Bay and Botley Park, Oxford, June 2nd 2024

In Jerome K. Jerome's famous novel about a boat trip on the Thames, "Three Men in a Boat", the narrator says that "Between Iffley and Oxford is the most difficult bit of the river I know. You want to be born on that bit of water, to understand it. I have been over it a fairish number of times, but I have never been able to get the hang of it. The man who could row a straight course from Oxford to Iffley ought to be able to live comfortably, under one roof, with his wife, his mother-in-law, his elder sister, and the old servant who was in the family when he was a baby."

He was probably talking about the channel we know as the present-day Thames. But the Thames isn't just one channel — isn't only the path boats take along it now. It splits and rejoins itself, and Jerome's remark indicates well the complexities this forms. Oxford is more than university lecturers and students and Harry Potter; farmers, ferry operators and even just people getting around on foot or horse would have needed to understand its waters. The streams around Botley Road show this well, and I'm going to devote a few videos to them, using short routes suitable for lunchtime walks. In this video, I look at a once-important part of Bulstake or Bullstake Stream: the former bathing place at Tumbling Bay, behind the West Oxford Community Centre. The video is a companion to    • Parson's Pleasure and the University ...   , which looks at another famous bathing place, Parson's Pleasure in the University Parks.

"Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/... . The book's main entry point is https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/308 .

Tumbling Bay Café: https://www.woca.org.uk/pages/12-the-... .

History of the bathing spot, by Malcolm Graham: http://web.archive.org/web/2004010713... .

Wild swimming at Tumbling Bay: https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/G... .