August 2011

	Thames Path - Abingdon-Oxford Abingdon - Oxford. Friday 26 August 2011
	We left the Thames Path to walk beside the Eynsham Wharf stream - here at Clay Weir, built around 1790 to improve navigation. Hard now to believe that this was animportant commercial waterway taking barges laden with stone, agricultural produce and furze used as fuel to Oxford and London (around 120 miles by river.) The Oxford Canal Company built the Clay Weir, but navigation was still difficult. Eynsham Wharf remained profitable and further improvements were made as late as the 1920s. The last load of coal was unloaded in 1925, but the Wharf and an adjoining pub remained in the ownership of the Oxford Canal Company until nationalisation in 1948. (From a detailed account in 'The Eynsham Record', No 17 - 2000)
	The centre of Eynsham with market hall and parish church Fencing around the site of the railway station, closed to passengers in 1962 and its platform taken to the Didcot Railway Centre of the Great Western Society in 1984. Fishponds of Eynsham Abbey, founded in 1005 probably on the site of a 7th century minster. Its first abbot was Aelfric, the most prolific writer of early English, writing many homilies and the earliest medieval Latin grammar, glossary and guide to speaking in Latin. View from the top deck of the bus going over the Swinford Toll Bridge at Eynsham. The 5p toll for cars brings the anonymous owner around £175,000 a year tax free. Locals have been campaigning to get the toll removed for over 100 years, now largely because of the 20 minute hold ups it causes at rush hours on this major commuter route.
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