Oxford Canal - Oxford to Kidlington (★★★★☆)

Today the plan is to make a start on the Oxford Canal, which will be the first in a series of walks that will join up the walking I have done in the south of England with the walking I have done in the north of England.

When walking my main focus is ticking off as many sections of the National Trails as possible, but in the colder half of the year I tend to do most of my walking along the canals (which does also add some contrast to the walking), and I also walk any Named Trails that look particularly good.

One of the benefits of this approach is that instead of ticking off a list of isolated Wainwrights, or points of interest, you end up creating a network of interconnected trails.

At this point I still have a lone walk in Scotland, and some isolated walks along the England-Wales border and around Birmingham - but otherwise these walks generally form part of two connected (or nearly connected) networks of walks in the north and south of England.

In the north this network of walks connects Gretna, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Filey, Leeds, Liverpool, Kidsgrove and Derby - whilst in the south it connects together Winchester, Farnham, London, Bristol, Oxford, Inginhoe and Dover.

At this point, the most southerly point of my walks in the north of England is Derby - whilst the most northerly points in the south of England are at Oxford and Ivinghoe. And our plan today is to head out from the more southerly of the southern points - from Oxford - on the first of three separate walks up the Oxford Canal (over a total of five days).

In addition to walking the Oxford Canal, I also hope to complete the length of the shorter Coventry Canal by the end of the year - and then in the spring I will return to walk the western end of the Trent & Mersey Canal (with a small extension into Derby at the end of that walk).

By the end of that final walk I will have walked a continuous route between Oxford and Derby - and in doing so will have connected up a larger network of walks, spanning from Gretna in the north-west, Berwick-upon-Tweed in the north-east, Bristol in the south-west and Dover in the south-east.

Today we have a much smaller focus, which is to complete the relative short walk between Oxford and Kidlington along the Oxford Canal - and with this being a fairly short walk, I have time to head to Oxford via London - rather than suffering the genuinely awful experience offered by the more direct train service run by Cross Country.

With this journey complete I arrive in Oxford, and then start to walk west - where I soon meet up with the route of the Oxford Canal.

Here we cannot quite complete the full southern length of the canal - as there is no footpath down to the join with the River Thames. And instead we pick up the canal to the north of this point - and start to head north, along a busy stretch of path that heads through a delightful part of Oxford.

Crossing over the canal on the way out of central Oxford

Oxford itself is a bit of an oddity. It is a major city, but it retains the character of a minor town - with very little in the way of modern development. And the whole place seems to have been paused in time a few decades ago - functioning as if it is a living museum for the 1990s.

For us this is a big positive - as the canal has a far more rural character than you would expect to see whilst heading through the middle of a major city - but on the flip side this is now an extraordinarily expensive place to live, with some of the bordering terraced housings costing in excess of a million pounds.

The varied character of Oxford (that house in white is worth about £700k by the way)

A rare modern development

The impact of this high cost of housing does have a bit of a knock on effect on the canal - and here we do see a return of the static boats that are now a feature of our modern cities.

These boats have an infrastructure around then that goes well beyond what you expect to see with a travelling boater - with vegetables, benches and their own little garden being constructed on the banks of the canal.

But whilst I see the downsides for those wanting to live in Oxford, for us the degree to which Oxford finds itself lost in time is a clear positive - and this stretch of canal heading through the city, is one of the most charming stretches I have walked to date.

Still near the centre of Oxford

Now starting to leave the centre of the city behind

To the west of us lies the River Thames, with the two running in parallel until after both have passed under the A34 - with Port Meadow (an area of no housing) sitting between the two.

This limits the amount of activity going on to the west of us, and with the housing also soon disappearing on the east of the canal, we very rapidly end up in properly rural surroundings - despite still being within the wider city of Oxford.

A bit further on along the canal, we do however reach Wolvercote - and here there is a slight (and brief) return of urban activity - before we head under the A34, and past Duke's Lock - as we cross into the countryside that sits between Oxford, and Kidlington to the north.

At Duke's Lock

So far the path has been truly excellent, but having passed under the A44 this gold standard of towpath ends, as the cycle trail heads off towards Blenheim Palace - and from here the towpath will alternate between being a narrow tarmac strip or overgrown foliage for the foreseeable future.

Along this narrower stretch of towpath, there are times when we need to step to one side to let someone coming the other way through - but the towpath here is fairly quiet, as we walk the fairly short distance to the southern end of Kidlington.

And here the path improves a little, as we walk the one and a half mile stretch that runs alongside this suburb of Oxford.

Kidlington itself sits exclusively on the eastern side of the canal - and since we are walking on the western side we really don't particularly notice this stretch of housing as we make our way past - and mostly this is a heavily wooded stretch of the canal.

The wooded stretch of canal heading past Kidlington

By this point we are already closing in on the end of our walk - and from here the plan is to make our way to the very northern tip of Kidlington, and then stop overnight at the Premier Inn located within Oxford Technology Park.

This provides a much cheaper option than anything within Oxford - whilst also being a fairly short distance from the canal. And tomorrow we will continue on up the canal to Banbury.

Total Distance: 6.9 miles (6.2 miles on the Oxford Canal)

Total Ascent: 79 feet (59 feet on the Oxford Canal)

Enjoyment Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ★ / 5

Click for a connecting walk along the Thames Path from Abingdon to Oxford.

Disclaimer: This writeup provides a narrative of what to expect rather than a route guide to follow. The route is covered by the 164 OS Landranger map (links redirect to Amazon). The route simply follows the canal and so is easy to follow