Becoming a Punter

Punting through the Fantasyland of Oxford

In most of England a “punter” simply means someone who goes to pubs, an activity at which I’ve always excelled.

In Oxford, however, being a punter involves actual punting: balancing precariously at the back end of a 24-foot-long skiff, gripping a sixteen-foot pole, and attempting to shove a flat-bottomed boat in something resembling a straight line down a narrow twisting stream overhung with tree branches, picturesque low bridges, and other maritime hazards.

Frances, my partner, thought this was great fun because all she had to do was lean back against some cushions while I spent an hour laboriously pushing us in a big circuit around the island created by the Cherwell River’s braided streams just south of Magdalen Bridge (where we rented our punt for £12/$24; www.oxfordpunting.co.uk).

I spent most of my time concentrating on keeping my balance and figuring out how not to get the pole stuck in the mucky river bottom every time I pushed off—the trick is to give it a half twist as you yank it out. (Many a novice punter has, in a panic, kept their stuck pole in a death grip and let it drag them right off the boat.)

Frances, on the other hand, spent a lazy hour watching willow whips trace wavelets in the current, duck families waddle across Christ Church Meadows, couples stroll the towpaths, and the occasional white swan glide by.

Once or twice I took a break from poling, clambered down onto a cushion myself, and shared in the scenery. It is, after all, terribly romantic. (American student T.S. Eliot first encountered his future wife while punting the Cherwell.) The shady riverbanks, grassy meadows, and the famous dreamscape of spires and gargoyled buildings rising beyond...it was suddenly quite easy to see how Oxford has inspired some of the richest fantasy worlds in English literature.

The Original Tea Party

On July 4, 1862, Christ Church College mathematics professor Charles Dodgson and a friend hired a boat for an afternoon and invited the three daughters of the college dean, Henry Liddell, to join them on the river.

It was a “golden afternoon,” according to Dodgson’s diary: “...the cloudless blue above, the watery mirror below, the boat drifting idly on its way.” They had tea on the riverbank, and Dodgson entertained the girls with a fantastical tale of a child’s underground adventures, casting young Alice Liddell in the lead role. Dodgson—better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll—later recalled that, “...in a desperate attempt to strike out some new line of fairy-lore, I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole, to begin with, without the least idea what was to happen afterwards.”

Carroll didn’t invent Wonderland from whole cloth. He threw in bits of his everyday life at Oxford—for instance, a cat named Dinah that was fond of napping in a tree in the Deanery garden. Dodgson even had his very own rabbit hole, a spiral staircase hidden by the wood paneling on the dais behind the staff table in the college’s grand dining hall, which he often used to slip out quietly after dinner.

Dodgson wasn’t the only Oxford don to dream up fantasy realms during his tenure.

Enter the Inklings

English professor C.S. Lewis once wrote in his diary that from his rooms in Magdalen College he could “...see nothing, not even a gable or a spire, to remind me that I am in town. I look down on a stretch of ground which passes into a grove of immemorial forest trees, at present coloured autumn red. Over it stray deer...” You can almost picture him daydreaming about the thin veil separating fantasy from reality—and how adventurous children might find ways to breech it.

Lewis would often spend what he described as “golden sessions” with the Inklings, a group of like-minded Oxfordians who would gather to discuss their shared passions: theology, philosophy, literature, and the writing process.

One of the Inklings closest to Lewis was a don of Anglo-Saxon languages named J.R.R. Tolkien. From 1939 to 1962, when not teaching literature (or writing it), the Inklings met regularly in the Rabbit Room of The Eagle and Child (tel. 01865-302-925), a 1650 pub at 49 St. Giles Street that they called "The Bird and Baby." Nailed to the wall above the pub’s fireplace is a 1949 document signed by the Inklings to attest that each had drunk to the landlord’s health.

I stood in the Rabbit Room, glass of Oxfordshire-brewed Brakspear Special in hand like a proper punter, and examined the signatures, which were so florid and bombastic I could come to only one conclusion: the Inklings must have been quite drunk at the time.

With a Cheshire smile I raised my pint and made my own silent toast: to Middle Earth, Narnia, Wonderland, and the Oxford that inspired them all.

When You Go...

Oxford (www.visitoxford.org) is just a 100-minute bus ride (www.oxfordtube.com or www.oxfordbus.co.uk) from Heathrow airport (£17/$34) or London’s Victoria Coach Station (£12/$24).

My favorite lodgings are Bath Place Hotel (011-44-(0)1865-791-812, www.bathplace.co.uk, from £99/$200), a clutch of 17th-century houses—featured in Jude the Obscure, once home to Dorothy L. Sayers, and former trysting site for Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor—on a delightfully twisting alleyway in the center of town. An added plus—though not for nightly noise levels—lies across the alley: cheap pub grub and excellent ales at the venerable Turf Tavern (www.theturftavern.co.uk), where Oxford student Bill Clinton famously didn’t inhale.

Among the 35 separate colleges puzzled together to make up both the university and the urban fabric of Oxford, Christ Church (011-44-(0)1865-276-492, www.chch.ox.ac.uk; £4.90) is the largest, most prestigious, and one of the few that makes it easy for nonstudents to tour (Mon-Sat 9am-5pm). Its chapel doubles as the city’s cathedral (the smallest in Britain), and its picture gallery contains works by Da Vinci and Michelangelo.