Cholsey put-in (South Oxfordshire)

The put-in sits within Cholsey Marsh, a 19-hectare (47-acre) nature reserve run by the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust, one of the last surviving Thames-side marshes after centuries of drainage for farming. It is home to the nationally rare Desmoulin's whorl snail and to the summer snowflake, or Loddon lily, a native of the Thames Valley's marshes and riverbanks that flowers here in late spring.

Kingfishers hunt along the water here, and dragonflies and damselflies, including the club-tailed dragonfly and white-legged damselfly, are on the wing in summer.

The put-in lies roughly mid-way along the longest lock-to-lock reach on the non-tidal Thames, with Benson Lock upstream and Cleeve and Goring Locks downstream.

Oxford Brookes University's boathouse and rowing centre sits on this stretch near Cholsey, on what the university describes as a 10km stretch of the river "classed as one of the best non-tidal stretches of water in the country." Rowing crews use this reach alongside pleasure boat traffic. Moulsford Railway Bridge, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, crosses the river about five furlongs (1 km) downstream.