Port Meadow - is it flooded

dylanwinter said:
I fancy taking the duck punt for a sail across port meadow and down the thames

Dylan
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Sorry , when you said 'across port meadow and down the thames' I assumed you meant you were going out on the main river ?

All too easy to mock Dangerous Dyl ;) it's not a game , I see the power in the river every day , and manning the duty desk , have to deal with the aftermath of people doing silly things when the river is in full flow.

My advice stands I'm afraid , I wouldn't go afloat on the river at present.
 
Dylan

I wouldn't usually stick my nose in to a conversation between you, (who knows about sailing), and TL, (who knows all about the Thames), but I have to ask, have you seen the Thames in the past few days?
 
that is why I am asking

Moxon said:
Dylan

I wouldn't usually stick my nose in to a conversation between you, (who knows about sailing), and TL, (who knows all about the Thames), but I have to ask, have you seen the Thames in the past few days?
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sorry,

Port meadow is about 30 mins away by car

which was why I was asking

it is always hard to judge the value of advice

the longer I have been doing KTL the more I get told not to do stuff

there are blokes at Brough who have never been beyond the bridge or above trent falls and are always telling me how many different ways I am going to die

I wish I had a quid each time I have been told to stay out of the Wallet or that wells bar is a killer or that tat to enter the Swale during springs is a certain way of committing suicide

usually by people who seldom stray more than a few hundred yards from their mooring

Of course I will have a good look before committing myself

but....

you only go once around this hamster wheel they call life

and having seen port meadow and having seen it flooded and thought about sailing across it

I don't want to load the punt on the car if there is not water there though

Dylan
 
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Dylan

All good points.

If you want to do something dangerous tomorrow then meet me in Lechlade with waders and come on an adventure to see if the world's best tiny cabin cruiser is still there. If we can get to the mooring, (end of farmer's field), which I doubt, we can then check neighbour's boats and lines.

In all probability this will be an event of looking from afar with binoculars as a worry management exercise. But it might make a funny film. If you come I'll buy you lunch in the pub.

Stephen.
 
A former school friend of my son's died opposite Bossoms a few years back cycling on the path when the river was in flood. The flooding round Oxford this winter is the worst I can remember in the last 25 years.
 
Dylan , again , no disrespect , but I've been on the thames my whole life. Grown up boating on it , and then grown older working on it. So I feel reasonably qualified to give advice when a question is asked. I'm not an armchair boater. When I'm not at work with the EA , I'm usually on the river most days.

My family has been associated with the river thames for a long while.

If I tell you that we have 400 tons of water a second flowing past our place and that a boat moored in our weir stream was showing 9 knots on the speedo while moored up , will that give you an idea of what the river is like at the moment ? Or that every single thames weir is fully drawn at the moment , and there are sunk boats on literally every reach at the moment and more than a few stuck on weirs ?

Not trying to stop your fun , just trying to stop you becoming a statistic. :)
 
Dear Dylan, I have ventured out on reds in a Shetland with 9.9hp, 'just for a laugh' and had a good play, but looking like it is the last day or so, I am leaving the 330hp Scand in the Marina when I go down in a day or so.

It's beyond 'having a laugh' ;)
 
thanks

Moxon said:
Dylan

All good points.

If you want to do something dangerous tomorrow then meet me in Lechlade with waders and come on an adventure to see if the world's best tiny cabin cruiser is still there. If we can get to the mooring, (end of farmer's field), which I doubt, we can then check neighbour's boats and lines.

In all probability this will be an event of looking from afar with binoculars as a worry management exercise. But it might make a funny film. If you come I'll buy you lunch in the pub.

Stephen.
Click to expand...

thanks Stephen,

lunch one day would be wonderful

but the idea is not to do find something dangerous to do

if I wanted that then I would put on my tight pink trousers, don my poker dot sailors hat and have a gin and tonic in the Dark Lantern in Aylesbury

Today is my 57th birthday

I am not aiming to have a laugh or do anything dangerous

I have nothing to prove to anyone about how foolhardy or brave I am

I will wear

I have walked port meadow lots of times, courted my wife there, watched the thistle down dancing across a summer sunset.

I have also seen it flooded when despite the power of the river it has been a tranquil sheet of water reflecting the skeletons of leafless winter trees

Now I have a boat that can sail in six inches of water and I have sailed the length of the Thames then I thought a quiet sail across an place that is just occassionally flooded might be an entertaining way to spend a morning

I am confident that the most dangerous part of the whole enterprise would be driving a 15 year old polo with a 15 foot boat on the roof down the A34


if I get there and it looks too frightening then I will chicken out before you can say winker

of course it might not be flooded - in which case my 30 mile round trip will be a waste of good petrol

Dylan
 
Went through Oxford today and didn't look at Port Meadow specificaly but the floods are all around and over some of the main roads so the Meadow will be well flooded. I presume you would launch from the Jericho side in which case you should be ok, but I wouldn't go anwhere near the main stream without an engine, assuming you are familiar with the area and know where it is otherwise stay well away.
 
car park

Chris_d said:
Went through Oxford today and didn't look at Port Meadow specificaly but the floods are all around and over some of the main roads so the Meadow will be well flooded. I presume you would launch from the Jericho side in which case you should be ok, but I wouldn't go anwhere near the main stream without an engine, assuming you are familiar with the area and know where it is otherwise stay well away.
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I usually park up by the public loos at the north end of that stretch of river

so there should not be any need to go anywhere near the main stream

Dylan

these have been on twitter

http://twitpic.com/bpwha6

http://twitpic.com/bpib1z
 
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Happy Birthday Dylan!

O.K. well, (and I know it's difficult to tell on an internet forum), my lunch offer was sincere. I shall be in Lechlade tomorrow and will take my good camera - on the grounds that I can't find the pocket camera in all this Christmas muddle.

In the event that I manage to get near to the boat will deff wear my recently purchased life jacket.

Here's the thing, I don't know what or where Port Meadow is - but if it's anywhere near the currently wild Thames I'd stay away from it. Father Christmas brought me an inflatable kayak and I did think about trying it in the Fritillary field at Cricklade. It's a natural floodplain of the very young Thames. Had a look yesterday and realised that even there it was not prudent to be afloat near the river - let alone on it.

Again, happy birthday.
 
Port Meadow is in Oxford. If you find the railway station on a map, you can follow the Thames N and a little to the W and it's very clear on the East side of the river there. It's a large meadow, and there will be little flow across it when flooded, and it's large enough to keep well away from the main channel. I work very close to it, so know it well.

PS Happy Birthday Dylan
 
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I would agree with Dylan; as long as he is over the meadow, and nowhere near the river, there shouldn't be any risk of fast moving water. The meadows all around Henley are similar, could easily kayak safely across many fields at present. Assumes good local knowledge to know where the river is.
I guess he won't need a licence either!
River around here not yet up to winter 2002/3 levels when I was at Hurley lock this morning, but now similar to July 2007.
Can we expect the EA warnings of the "surge"?
 
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