Travellers and visitors have streamed to, and through Oxford, for centuries. Its name conveys its very functional origin as a fording point on the River Thames. Obviously these travellers and visitors came from a variety of directions, and by a variety of routes, using land and water transport. On this occasion the present writer intends to consider the traffic which passed in a westerly direction along the Thames Valley towards Oxford. From the middle of the 19th century the leisurely use of the Thames from London to Oxford became a very prominent feature of the communities through which the Thames flowed. The atmosphere to be observed is very much mirrored by the contents and context of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat. A reading of this will give a sense of what the river-borne pleasure seekers experienced and enjoyed, and a present-day observer along the Thames anywhere between Windsor and Oxford will see similarities of behaviour and enjoyment even a century or so later. Obviously Jerome's book is remembered for its comedic qualities but it may well be rather more than that.