The free-roaming horses
Ponies and cattle graze under a right recorded in 1086, and stand along the skyline at sunset like a painting.
Jpbowen — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Jpbowen — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Jpbowen — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Jpbowen — CC BY-SA 4.0
No plough has touched this ground in at least a thousand years. The right of Oxford's Freemen to graze their animals here for nothing was written down in the Domesday Book of 1086 and has never lapsed, which is why ponies and cattle still wander at will across roughly 137 hectares of riverside grass while the college spires sit a few minutes' walk away. Because the turf was never turned, Bronze Age burial mounds, an Iron Age settlement and seventeenth-century Civil War earthworks lie intact beneath it, and the meadow is both a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Getting there is easy: from the railway station or the Jericho quarter it is a twenty- to thirty-minute walk along Walton Well Road, then a small gate and the world changes in one step - open horizon, big sky, a line of trees marking the Thames. The best route heads west to the hamlet of Binsey, then north along the towpath to the ruins of Godstow Abbey and the village of Wolvercote, a round trip of about two hours. Sunset, with the light on the water and the horses silhouetted along the skyline, is the real reason Oxford people come. It is free and open at all hours, but be honest with yourself about what it is. There is almost no shade, no cafe, no toilets; the only fixed picnic benches and barbecue stands are at the Godstow Road entrance in the north. The ground is rough grazing, hard work for a small pushchair, though families love a space where children can run without a car in sight. The animals are placid but not for feeding or crowding, and the council advises against swimming in the river because of water quality. Summer is the golden season. In winter the meadow turns into a shallow lake that draws more than a thousand lapwings and golden plovers, plus hundreds of teal, wigeon and geese - beautiful from a distance, but it means wet feet, mud and submerged paths, so a November-to-March visitor should stick to the eastern edge and the view. In short, this is a walk rather than a sight: give it half a morning if you enjoy open English countryside, and skip it if you have a single packed day of colleges in Oxford.
Ponies and cattle graze under a right recorded in 1086, and stand along the skyline at sunset like a painting.
A two-hour loop along the Thames past a tiny hamlet and the ruins of a medieval abbey.
When the floods come between November and March, over a thousand lapwings and golden plovers land here with hundreds of teal and wigeon - watch from the eastern edge and keep your feet dry.
Walton Well Road, Oxford OX2 6ED
With a single day in Oxford, the college gardens and the Natural History Museum come first: Port Meadow has no shade, no toilets and no cafe, and the ground is tough on pushchairs. If you are staying several days in summer, make it a pre-sunset outing - children love the space and the horses; bring water, hats and shoes that can take wet grass.