This canal used to be one of the main commercial links from the Thames at Oxford to the Midlands but is now used almost exclusively by leisure traffic. The number of narrowboats is increasing year by year offering very colourful photo opportunities, particularly in the holiday season, as they saunter, almost silently too and fro down the full length of the Cherwell Valley. Robert and Charlotte walked the towpath, in 1940, in the new romantic novel, Aynho Junction. They observed camourflaged boats laden with armaments passing in both directions.