In contrast to the bigger and brasher Isis – a fat, grey artery criss-crossed with rowers, smacks, barges, litter, and the dark knowledge of London to the east – the Cherwell seems half-forgotten, like an overgrown afterthought carved quietly behind a handful of colleges who have colluded to keep her their secret. The dappled shade, the midges, the heron-priested banks, the punts tethered idly to mooring places, the angler silhouetted in mist: these memories continue to sparkle in the mind long after wet bottoms and lost paddles have been forgotten.
The Cherwell River is a symbol both of summer and of Wolfson. Cherwell Day is an occasion on which the College and University community celebrates its relationship with the river and with summer in the best way possible: by punting, playing croquet, drinking Pimms in the gardens, and sharing a well-cooked dinner. Wolfson isn’t yet a very old college, but it already has some fine traditions: Cherwell Day is among the finest.
Cherwell Day is an annual punt regatta, croquet tournament, and dinner held at Wolfson College, Oxford.
For many colleges, summer signals an ending. Undergraduates leave for the long vacation. Kitchens shutter. Books gather dust. Trees and lawns wilt to brown in Oxford’s limestone sun.
This phenomenon is alien to Wolfson. As a graduate college, it doesn’t estivate with the same lethargic sang-froid as do its undergraduate peers. The rhythm of life does slow in the summer, but it never stops completely. Indeed, there is something in the whitewash of its walls and the verdure of its quads that causes the summer sun to vivify the place. Angles are etched in lapidary detail; cloisters fill with the smell of wildflowers; the blue sky is reflected in windows.
Wolfson does summer well, and it does it well in virtue of its landscape. The meadows, the river, the trees and the gardens – all tucked behind north Oxford’s handsome streets, with their rose-red houses ‘half as old as time’. Summer in the city is a drudge; summer by the river is bliss.
Every year, Wolfson College celebrates its geographical good fortune on Cherwell Day. Cherwell Day is an important event in the pattern of college life. It is an opportunity for students, fellows, family and friends to come together on a summer’s afternoon; to wash off the dyspeptic patina of ‘busy-ness’ that crowds the place the rest of the year; and to enjoy a day of merriment, japes and high-jinks – seasoned, of course, with some healthy competition. Cherwell Day has four elements. There is a punt regatta. There is a croquet tournament. There are drinks in the garden. And there is a dinner.
The Admiral of the Punts and the Master of Croquet warmly invite you to Cherwell Day 2018. You can participate in all of the festivities, some, or none. What matters is simply that you embrace the timeless spirit of a Cherwell summer. It is, after all, what the founders who set us up on this bucolic riverbank would have wanted.
Yours,
Sabin Sulzer, Wolfson College Sports Chair, on behalf of the Admiral of the Punts and the Master of Croquet