Punting on the River Cherwell

Until a couple of weeks ago I had never heard of “punting” outside of American football. Time to punt the ball! But Adam introduced me to something the Brits call punting, and it has to do with being on a river with a shallow boat and giant pole.

Punting is the act of being on a punt, a boat that looks like this, and using a large pole to move it:

As you can see, the punter stands on the boat like a gondolier while the passengers ride in the middle. The punter uses the pole to move the punt by raising the approximately 7-ft pole up and placing it on the bottom of the river to propel the punt.

Last week Adam and I got on a punt. He was the punter, and I the passenger. He said I could punt, but it looked too difficult for me to handle. I did help by untying the punt from the dock and pushing off, which, for me, was difficult! I also don’t have the best balance, so even standing in the punt was scary! I almost had a panic attack!

Here are some pictures from our night out on the punt:

Adam is an excellent punter. He’s done it twice, and it’s like he’s a pro now. But he couldn’t control the weather, and it started raining while we were out, so I suggested he get us over to a tree, and we waited out the rain for about 10 minutes (as shown in the last two pics).

There were also a lot of geese and some swans on the river, and this proved for an interesting interaction:

See that parent swan and the swanlings? Well, there’s a second parent swan swimming around attacking all the geese to keep them away from those babies. Adam counted at least 100 geese. The attack swan was going after the geese and at one point got really close to our punt and another punt. I was scared that we were gonna get attacked! 😀 We didn’t.

As we left the Cherwell Boathouse we saw this sign that explains how punting works. We did not see that going in or else we would have brought a picnic and some Pimms with us! At least I had a couple of glasses the next night (pictured at left).

Punting was so much fun, and if you’re in England and get a chance to do it, don’t pass it up!