This painting of the ferry at Moulsford from 1906 takes us back to a slower agricultural age when summer seemed to go on forever. In reality, when snow was on the ground, and the wind was howling, the ferryman would have been happier in the shelter of the old riverside pub, the Beetle and Wedge.

.. but visit the pub on a hazy day in August and take a boat out on the water, because messing about on the river has a long tradition at the Beetle and Wedge. It has been the haunt of poets and writers since Victorian times, and on a warm summer's day, it is easy to imagine local authors dreaming up such classics as The Wind in the Willows and Three Men in a Boat.

The Taunt guide for 1873 featured an advertisement for The Beetle and Wedge promising: "Good accomodation for tourists, anglers, etc. Boats housed or to be let. S.Swadling, Proprietor."

Dickens's Dictionary of the Thames, 1889 says that it was renowned for "the fact that the trial eights of the Oxford University Boat Club are rowed on the splendid stretch of water which here affords perhaps the best course on the river. There is excellent perch fishing between the islands near the bridge."

The agricultural past of the Beetle and Wedge is remembered in its name. The beetle was not an insect, but actually a kind of mallet used to drive in a wedge when splitting wood.

Beetle and Wedge
Ferry Lane, Moulsford-on-Thames, Oxfordshire OX10 9JF
tel: 01491 651 381