Farmoor Reservoir

As you’ll have no doubt seen in the news, yesterday was “Super Saturday”, when England celebrated the return of pubs, restaurants and hairdressers. Anyone who knows me will know, or at least can probably guess, that I think this is a bit hasty, especially where pubs are concerned; drunk people are not known for their ability to judge distances, much less maintain them. With pubs opening from 6am, going for daily exercise on a walk around central Oxford felt like a bad idea. Fortunately, we now have access to a car, so we could go for a walk somewhere else instead. And, given the title of this blog, and that fact that this was the first time I’d escaped the bounds of the City of Oxford in nearly four months, I had to blog about it.

Date of trip: Saturday 4th July 2020

Before we proceed, a COVID-19 ethics statement: I am aware that it is still, arguably, incumbent upon all of us to minimise our unnecessary travel, even as we emerge from lockdown. As such, I want to make it absolutely plain that I will not visit anywhere solely for the purposes of this blog, as I was wont to do in the anteCOVIDian days. On the other hand, I do have a legitimate need to practise my driving, so that, when the time is right, I can drive to see my family (and additionally to be able to help with driving when moving out of Oxford in the relatively near future): as I had not driven in a year before yesterday, I need to practise my driving on quieter roads before hitting the motorway.

As such, I may make blog posts about the places we go, if there’s anything interesting to say about them. This blog doesn’t have a wide enough reach that the following is really a problem, but I emphatically don’t suggest you all flock there; I also won’t be including the usual “journey time” and “fare” sections because unnecessary use of public transport is still really not within the guidance. We will also maintain strict social distancing anywhere we might be (which is a medical requirement for me anyway); if, like Bournemouth Beach in those infamous photos, it seems that getting out of the car would make social distancing impossible, we will drive on.

I hope that reassures anyone who might have been skittish about my posting travel posts here; I’m going to add a version of this disclaimer to my “travel advice” page as well. Please take any recommendations on this site of places to visit, whether posted before or after the onset of the pandemic, as recommendations conditional on the trip being both within government guidance, and, in your judgement, safe.

Anyway, on with the show. I’d been to Farmoor once before, which was how I knew about it. It’s really not far from Oxford, just a few miles to the west, and very obvious on a satellite view of the area around the city. It was built in two parts, with a causeway between them, and it’s absolutely huge: the total amount of water in it would fill the Royal Albert Hall more than 100 times over. (Sadly, even though the first part of Farmoor was completed in the same year as the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album came out, John Lennon didn’t think to tell us how many holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, would fill the new lake.)

We walked around the larger, and newer, southern part of the reservoir, which signs informed us was about two-and-a-half miles. We’d come dressed for summer weather, without coats or umbrellas, which was a mistake. “That’s just spray coming off the surface,” I optimistically said, denying the increasing evidence that the water was hitting us from above, not below. Fortunately, the rain never reached more than the level of a drizzle.

I can’t say there were a lot of fascinating things to report on: a sign for “Toilets” that appeared just to point at some nearby woods was mildly amusing; there were moorhens, flamingos and the occasional albatross on the surface of the water; even the ostriches gathered in gaggles on the path were relatively docile. Perhaps we would have found more interesting things on the nearby paths, but they were very narrow, and maintaining a two-metre distance would have been impossible had anyone come the other way. We didn’t even manage to see the Thames, which apparently runs down the western side of the site.

Social distancing while walking the perimeter of the lake, however, was extremely easy. The path is probably only about two metres wide, but there is a wide area of grass on the non-watery side of the path, so it was very easy to stay away from people. Even without COVID, that would have been a useful safety measure: fly-fishing anglers were frequently casting off into the lake, presenting a risk of being lashed by a fast-moving line. (Concerningly, pedestrians were warned to watch out for anglers, and not the other way around.)

Indeed, even on the causeway across the middle (with, obviously, no grass verges), it was mostly straightforward to stay away from people, and the whole thing was the most relaxed I’ve felt on a walk since the pandemic started. The only hairy part was the final stretch back to the car park past the anglers’ clubhouse, where people were staying fairly well-distanced, but where it was trickier to thread oneself between them.

Indeed, the biggest health risk on the whole trip seemed to be when we got back to the car and I realised I had ostrich dung on my shoe, and had to clean it off. An unfortunately messy end to an otherwise pleasant escape.