Walking in Oxford

I love Oxford.  The city of spires.  But sometimes it is nice to get outside the city and another beauty of Oxford is the immediacy of nature within the city limits.  So after a lazy Saturday morning, I spent a beautiful Saturday afternoon walking along the Thames (called the Isis in this part of the country) through Port Meadow.

From Wikipedia, the Port Meadow is:

The meadow is an ancient area of grazing land, still used for horses and cattle, and has never been ploughed.  In return for helping to defend the kingdom against the marauding Danes, the Freemen of Oxford were given 300 acres (120 ha) of pasture next to the River Thames by Alfred the Great who founded the city in the 10th century.  The Freemen's collective right to graze their animals free of charge is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 and has been exercised ever since.

At the end of Port Meadow is the Godstow Abbey ruins.  The abbey was built around 1133 by John of St. John and enlarged in 1139.  At the Dissolution, the site was granted to Henry VIII's physician and was later sold in 1616 to Sir John Walter.  Since 1924 Oxford University has owned the property in trust to "preserve the ruins for the nation."