Its towpath offers an alternative route to the city centre. The canal was completed in 1790 as a way of linking Oxford with the West Midlands (it reaches just north of Coventry). But the arrival of the railways eventually put paid to the canal for industrial transport and it is now used solely for leisure craft.
Jericho is virtually the end of the canal, so many visitors moor here. We used to have two boatyards to hire boats and to service them. One yard, Orchard Cruisers has now closed, but the other,'College Cruisers, is still going strong. The Oxford Navigation Company was floated in 1769 and received enthusiastic support from both the City and University. At that time the country was suffering some of the hardest winters of the Little Ice Age when the average January temperatures were 2.5°C lower than the present day and prolonged heavy snowfalls regularly blocked the roads. The prospect of a cheap, reliable and fast means of bringing coal, raw materials and manufactured goods from the growing industrial centres of the West Midlands to Oxford was very enticing.
Today the canal is a beautiful place to take a long walk, connect with nature, or travel down via barge or canoe. Its surrounding trees and flowers blossom and change with the seasons, while it's also home to mallards, swans and much more wildlife to observe (and hear - the birdsong is very loud in the summertime!).
