Punts are flat-bottomed boats with  square ends, propelled along a river by means of a long pole which is pushed into the ground (not to be confused with the equally romantic gondola, which has an oar instead of a pole).

As a punt has no keel it is easy to manoeuvre in shallow water, and because it is square at both ends it is possible to punt both forwards and backwards , or possibly just round and round in a circle.  As you might guess, punting is not as easy as the experts make it look, as you’ll see in this extract from  Jerome K. Jerome’s “Three Men in a Boat”:

“I had not been sitting there long before my attention became attracted to a man in a punt who, I noticed with some surprise, wore a jacket and cap exactly like mine. He was evidently a novice at punting, and his performance was most interesting. You never knew what was going to happen when he put the pole in; he evidently did not know himself. Sometimes he shot up stream and sometimes he shot down stream, and at other times he simply spun round and came up the other side of the pole. And with every result he seemed equally surprised and annoyed.”

Cambridge is a great place to get a taste of this leisurely pursuit, where the punter does the hard work and you do the leisurely bit!  The River Cam runs right through the centre of this beautiful town and the river provides some of the best views of the impressive University Colleges.

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This popularity means there are probably more punts on the Cam than on any other river in the UK.  If you want to partake, you’ll find no shortage of companies plying their services.

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Punting is also seen in other British towns, such as Oxford, Durham and Bath.  It is also a Thames pursuit, where they even hold the National Punting Championships each summer.  For an interesting article visit the Financial Times.

Other punting countries include Botswana, India and New Zealand.  If anyone has punting stories from around the world, do please share.

Posted as part of Frizztext’s Tagged P challenge, ABC Wednesday and Alphabe Thursday.