Walk to Oxford’s Christ Church Cathedral – Day 13 of 2025 England Pilgrimage

Wednesday 10/1/2025

Hello, October! You arrived in Kidlington with a surprise drizzle this morning. That couldn’t change our plans.

Jennie and Steve’s home has a lovely and relaxing small back yard. It has wood fencing on the sides and a brick and rock wall along the back. Directly behind their brick wall is the manmade narrow canal and accompanying tow path. This section is called the Oxford Canal, part of The Thames Ring. This was part of the transport system related to the River Thames (yes, the same River Thames that goes through London and pronounced “tems”.)

The canal is two to three plus narrowboats wide and it isn’t deep. The elevation of the land changes so there are locks along the way, allowing boats to go from one water level to another, one boat at a time. The boaters must get out of their boat and onto the towpath to hand operate the lock. They must also raise draw bridges along the canal by themselves, if needed.

Before there were gas engines, horses would pull boats and barges along the canals, moving coal and other supplies. The canal system was mostly abandoned for commercial purposes once trains became common. Now they are used mostly for recreational purposes.

There are designated places where narrowboats may moor. A few look to be permanently moored as they have mail boxes on the tow path and on the opposite side of the tow path they might have a table and chairs, a fire pit, a clothes line, birdfeeders, bikes, and more.

Signs tell how long a boat can be docked at a time, sometimes just two days, other places longer. There are spigots for refilling water in the boats, areas to dump the toilet cartridge, and a few places have electricity hookups.

Gregg and I binged on an Amazon show years ago called Cruising the Cut. It looks like the show is ongoing and now on YouTube. It is about a man who sold his house and bought a narrowboat. He records his slow-paced life living on a narrowboat (think, narrow but long houseboat that goes 3 miles per hour max.)

All that to say, this morning Gregg and I walked the tow path 7.5 miles from where we are staying in Kidlington into Oxford. We took our time and got there in three-ish hours. I stopped often to take photos (no surprise there) so it took more time than normal. We didn’t get much rain, only a few drips on and off. It was very relaxing. I loved listening to the birds, especially the European Robins, though they were ellusive and out of sight.

Christ Church Cathedral had a communion service at 1:05 so we headed over there. To get into the Cathedral, you must first get into Christ Church College. They are very strict as to whom may enter. You can pay to tour the College and cathedral. But, you can get in free if you are going for a service or to pray. The gate guard seemed skeptical that we really wanted to pray for half an hour since we were 35 minutes early for the service. Silly Americans! He let us through anyways with the admonition that this isn’t permission to look around and tour the Cathedral. I assured him that we had already been inside the Cathedral.

The Communion service was not sung. Since it was a small mid-day service, it was held in The Remembrance Chapel, a small side chapel. There may have been a dozen of us. Reverend Charlie Kerr officiated. He is the new Vicar for the Cathedral’s Centre for Christian Pilgrimage. We had a lovely conversation with him after the service.

This service was live-streamed which reminded me to look online. Though it was streamed, the service today was not recorded. Here is a choral Evensong service at Christ Church Cathedral similar to the one we attended last Friday evening (when Magdalen College Chapel didn’t have theirs due to the students being on break.)

For lunch afterwards, we walked around and finally decided on pizza at a sourdough pizza restaurant. One of their specials for the week was a fresh fig and goat cheese pizza. Yes, please! We shared one and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Though the sun was finally out and the sky was becoming blue, we were ready to call it a day. We found the bus stop and caught the bus that drops you off almost at the (tiny) neighborhood entrance.

We’re looking at walking options for tomorrow. The weather predictions say tomorrow is the last chance of a nice day before storms come in.