Cherwell valley, Somerton, on a bright and frosty morning.

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Toni
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Managed to grab a few minutes earlier this week for some pictures in the frost.

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Curious. Is no-one going to point out the OOF boats on the first image, or are my pics so dull and cliched as to be not even worth a bit of crit?
 
With a bit of processing your first image has come up rather nice........Just noticed you don't want them editing. OOps. Apologies.
 
With a bit of processing your first image has come up rather nice........Just noticed you don't want them editing. OOps. Apologies.

BTW no apology needed - if you still have it, I'd be glad to see your edit to the first image.

The colours of these are all muted because the landscape was delicately lit, rather than glowing, and I wanted to preserve some of that. At this size it just seems to make for a slightly dull image (smaller images always need to be brighter and more contrasty to have an impact that would be acceptable in a wall-size print) and I should probably have pumped them a bit harder.
 
Nice to see pics of home.... I used to live just down the road from Somerton..
 
Thanks Craig, that tidies it up nicely, and the colours work well at this size. Maybe you should edit my shots more often. ;)

@GeeJay57 whereabouts did you live Glenn? We've been here more than 25 years now.
 
Thanks Craig, that tidies it up nicely, and the colours work well at this size. Maybe you should edit my shots more often. ;)

@GeeJay57 whereabouts did you live Glenn? We've been here more than 25 years now.
Lower Heyford
 
I grew up there. The Cherwell Valley between Somerton and Bletchingdon was our playground. Learnt to swim in the Cherwell, learnt to drink in Steeple Aston. etc. etc... Seen so many changes there just in my lifetime. Should write a book and indeed may do before I'm too old to remember.
 
Did you swim much from the beach by the road at Somerton? It's gradually become unusable in recent years, but was fantastic for our children when they were little (our son is as old as I was when we moved here).
 
If I recall correctly, it wasn't a beach until after the late 70's when some idiot decided that dredging the Cherwell was a good idea to prevent flooding.....Made a right mess, ruined the water course and made zero practical difference to flooding.
Took years to recover and to be honest, it never really has. I don't get down there much these days, but when I have gone for a walk, the typical water level seems to be a bit lower than it once was.

But yes we used to go swimming at Somerton, Upper Heyford, Lower Heyford and near to Steeple Aston. Where we mostly used to swim in Lower Heyford, the river bed was gravel that had accumulated naturally and there was a shallow end for kids (about knee deep) with a deeper section (6-7ft) on the bend. The river bank was about 4ft above the water, so a running jump or dive into the deep-end was a lot of fun. Somerton was similar. When the river was dredged, this was completely ruined, the flow of the water changed and it ended up all mud.

In the 60's to pre-dredging 70's, pretty much all of the young families in the villages would swim in the river at the weekend. Most of us used to swim throughout the summer months in the evening too when the weather was goo. There was also a spot about halfway between Upper and Lower Heyford where the water was about 10ft deep. We used to jump out of trees into the water and built a diving board one year. That got ruined when the local water authority decided to put a sewage outfall into it.

In my Mum's youth, the canalboats were horse-drawn, so she used to swim in the canal at Upper Heyford. Now of course the canal is too muddy for swimming. We used to canoe along it though, pretty much from Somerton Deep-Lock down to Dashwood's Lock and sometimes a bit futher south.
 
I hadn't been aware of the dredging, but that's a daft thing to do to a river on a flood plain. :p The river does tend to be quite low during the summer at Lower Heyford now, especially in summer, though it still breaks its banks during the winter. For many years the valley would flood and freeze enough for ice skating (neighbours have told of winters cold enough to skate safely under the canal bridges too) but not so much these last 10 years.
 
I remember the canal freezing, but it didn't freeze decently all that often at Heyford. In '63 it was properly frozen, the men in the village played ice hockey at Heyford Wharf, though I was only a youngster at the time. We had to make do with making forts and sledging down the field, sliding across the canal, then trudging all the way back to the top. I have to say it was awesome fun. I do remember it freezing a few times in the subsequent winters, but often not strong enough to have a lot of confidence in. But for sure the river burst its banks pretty much every year and when it froze over it was often pretty safe to slide about on. Even if you went through the ice, the water was only a foot or so deep over the fields. So not much risk of drowning unless you strayed too close to the river itself.

Tell you what, next time I'm down visiting rellies I'll drop you a PM, perhaps we can meet up for a beer?
 
I know The Three Horse Shoes closed years ago (my Dad was on their darts team in the 60's). Good to know that The Barley Mow is still open. Used to have a few in there from time to time (it was downhill all the way home :) ), but not been in there for a long time.
 
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