When in doubt... punt.

We've heard much about punting the Thames. Come to find out the Thames is a nasty river and punting it is such a tourist attraction that punting the Thames is a pricey undertaking. So, spendthrifts that we are... we went punting the Cherwell.

A punt is a flat bottom boat about 16 feet long. It's about three feet wide at the center and tapers to about 20" on the ends. The pole is about 16 feet long as well.

First, there is no racing in punts. This is the slowest method of getting down a river yet invented. If you're reading this and you've never punted you might imagine that it's no big deal... you just push the little boat with the little pole and you float and everyone wears pastel colored pants and says things like, "Spot on, old chap." Not so. You push with the pole and boat turns sideways. You lift the pole up and the aromatic river water runs down your arms and into your armpits. If I hadn't received the off-handed, thirty second tutorial from the young man who worked at the rental office I'd have floundered in embarassing circles right in front of the rental place. As it was, I moved smoothly away from the rental agency and in less than 100 yards, I pretty much had the hang of it.

We went up the river about a mile and then turned around and came back down again. We smelled the fish we never saw. We saw a crawdad... not sure what the Brits call these little things... that might've been the biggest crawdad I've ever seen. We saw geese and ducks. The best moment of all was when a female duck and her ducklings came swimming over to our punt, begging for a handout and one of the ducklings swam under Susan's hand and let her touch it's downy feathers for a second or two. It was a lovely afternoon on the Cherwell.