During Easter Break, our Boat Club organised a “Rowing Camp” in Wallingford, a 45 minutes bus ride from Oxford. Practising rowing on the water for 5 hours a day, for more than a week.
Unlike on the Isis river in Oxford, you are not interrupted by other spinning boats or the need to turn after 10 minutes due to the shortness of the stretch but can row on for up to 30 minutes. This gave us some time to focus on technique and throw in some longer and faster pieces. The big “Summer Eight’s” races are coming up. Everyone wants to excel in these. Apparently, it is going to be a hell of a spectacle with up to 20.000 people coming to see the races.
Also, Wallingford itself is another quaint and beautiful village in the English countryside. As such, it is definitely worth a visit from Oxford. I also found that it was representative of English villages in general. Several elements can be identified in this respect:
Naturally, we find a lot of old churches with beautiful graveyards and gardens. 
The marketplace, where people meet up. It always strikes me as remarkable, that even these small villages have small and “funky” (independent) coffee shops (not referring to Costa here).
Needless to say, there is a post office and several pubs around.
