Oxford

Before I wax lyrical on the beauty that is Oxford, I should at least bring you up to date with what has been going on over the last few days.  After meeting with Nick & Fleur on Saturday, we had a “trapped indoors” Sunday because of the weather.  It cleared late afternoon, and so we walked around to Sue’s (Paula’s Mum) for dinner.  It was a lovely evening.  We got to meet Uncle Ken and cousin Johnny and his wife Lena which was nice.  We also had roast pork followed by apple and plum crumble for dinner which was delicious.  It was so nice to have a roast dinner.

Monday dawned fine and as sunshine seems in short supply at present (apparently it is officially the wettest drought that England has ever had – there is still a ban on using garden hoses for most of the country yet each day it is chucking it down), we planned to go for a longer walk.  We found a walk from Addlestone to Weybridge following a number of public footpaths and towpaths alongside the canals.  It was very pretty and it was great to get outside and get walking again.  That afternoon when we returned, Paula was mowing the lawns and so I helped her clear up some of the branches that they had trimmed from various trees as well as making more of a mess by starting to top the apple tree.

On Tuesday Siobhan had to go into the Job Centre in Woking to get her National Insurance number.  Because I had a visa to work here, I was simply allowed to fill in some forms and send them off.  Siobhan, who was born here, had to attend an interview.  You have to remember though, this is the home of bureaucracy.  Mark took us in to Woking and we had a quick look around the shops once Siobhan had finished.  When we got home, I finished off topping the apple tree.  It was good being able to do something to help them out for letting us stay with them.

The other news is that Callum, another of Paula’s cousins, is heading back to NZ soon and has a car for sale.  He lives in Oxford.  We thought that that seemed like a great opportunity to head off on another adventure to purchase a car and to see something of the country.  So on Wednesday morning, Mark kindly drove us to Oxford instead of letting us get the train.  It was very much appreciated.

Oxford

Oxford is pretty.  Oxford is old.  Oxford has a whole host of really cool buildings.  Oxford is not that big though.  Given we were coming here, we messaged Paul Michalik (who did his LLM here) to get a list of all of the really good things to do in Oxford.  We have had a pretty good go at ticking them all off.

First up was getting on the hop-on, hop-off bus so that we could get an overall feel for Oxford.  This was a very good idea.  We got a good appreciation for the city and our first view of a lot of the amazing buildings around here. The guide on the bus was also reasonably interesting when she wasn’t apologising for her voice (she thought that there was some problem as she had had a chest infection, but it was fine) in that typically English way.  Once we had done a lap, we headed to the Turf Tavern for lunch.  Apparently this is a favourite hangout for students, and it is quite out of the way down a very narrow lane.  We had already spotted it earlier though, when we were wandering around the Radcliffe Camera looking for where the bus stopped.  We had scampi & chips for lunch, and I now know not to bother ever ordering that again.  Scampi are deep fried shrimps in breadcrumbs, but they really just tasted like deep fried breadcrumbs.  (Note from Siobhan – scampi are, for some strange reason, a very English thing to eat.  So for me it was a very nostalgic lunch.  And the chips were great).

After lunch we headed back to where we are staying, past Magdelan College (which our guidebook says “always pronounce maudlin” without explanation.  You know what, if you want people to pronounce it as “maudlin”, you should spell it M-A-U-D-L-I-N).  Opposite Magdelan College are the Botanical Gardens that clearly needed exploring.  The tulips in the gardens were very beautiful, and the plants in the glasshouses were interesting too.  Although, having seen a number of gardens on our adventures so far, these gardens paled a little by comparison.  Having said that, it was interesting to see the different plants they had growing in a section of the garden that focused on different medicinal uses.  So there was a garden for plants that had stuff in them that was found to be useful for blood related disorders.  And others for various cancers, infectious diseases and the like.












Following this, we retired back to our room to rest our weary feet and plan what to do next.  We decided that Oxford isn’t really that big and that we could easily walk around it and so we headed back out exploring.  We walked through the grounds of Christ Church which is very impressive.  The building itself is very grand, and the grounds and gardens are immaculate.  Of course they stay that way by having enormous lawns that no one is allowed to walk on.  They also have a field with some deer.  This led us back into town and as it was getting late, we thought that we should get some dinner.  We also wanted to visit the Eagle & Child pub and so we killed two birds by having dinner there.

The reason for going to the Eagle & Child was because this is the pub where JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis used to hang out.  You certainly know you are in Oxford though.  The overheard pub conversations involved the sort of vocabulary that you strangely don’t find in pubs in Wellington.  For some reason we don’t need to talk in multi-syllabic words about esoteric subjects that no one cares about when we’re at the pub drinking beer and having something to eat.  You can all rest easier tonight though, to know that somewhere in the world someone has got a good handle on all of those matters.  I guess.

And, they also have great food there.  Siobhan’s dinner of a beef rib pie that had been cooked all day in stout was the winner on the night over my wild pork and chorizo fare.  However, things were a lot closer in the dessert stakes where an honourable draw was reached between the apple pie and custard vs the sticky date and toffee sauce pudding with vanilla ice cream.  Needless to say, we needed the walk from the opposite side of Oxford back to our accommodation after that.

Day two in Oxford started looking a bit damper than the first.  While the ground was wet, and our phones reckoned that there was an 80% chance of rain, it wasn’t raining yet.  We walked back into town and stopped for coffee at the Queen Anne coffee house on High street.  If Queen Anne used to drink that stuff, she needs to raise her standards.  After that we passed past (for Kate) old Uncle Edmund’s place.  He was the guy that was good at spotting comets, but not so good at spelling his own name.  He kept putting an extra “L” in it.

Just around the corner from there is the Bodleian Library.  We took a tour of this Library (and yes it does warrant a capital “L”).  Before the tour started we had about 40 minutes to spare, and so we went into an exhibition that the Library is currently hosting on The Romance of the Middle Ages.  This was very interesting, as it showed how romance as a genre was used and developed during the middle ages.  There were displays showing the influence from Greek history and the saga of Troy, through the various Arthurian accounts, to some more modern day examples.  In the modern day display case, there were some handwritten pages from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and there was a very amusing letter from the Film Censor’s office to the people who were seeking to show Monty Python and the Holy Grail on television.  While probably not intended to be funnier than the movie, the censor advised in the typically British way that they had “fairly carefully discussed” some of the scenes from the movie and that they needed to be adapted before the movie could be shown on television.  (Another note from Siobhan – that letter was hilarious and practically a Monty Python skit in its own right)

The tour of the Bodleian Library was the highlight of the day.  The tour guide was so knowledgeable about everything (of course he could have been making it all up but he was very convincing if that was the case).  The whole history of the building and of the collection kept us mesmerised for over an hour.  Very cool.  They reckon that they have over 11 million books in the Library.

When we got out of the Library we went to the Sheldonian Theatre where we were informed that it was closed.  It wasn’t clear whether this was for lunch, the day, or forever.  When faced with such rejection, we just had to have a Cornish Pasty^TM to make up for it.  We got an official one, not one of those cheap knock-off varieties.  This sustained us while we walked to Worcester College to see where Paul studied for his LLM.  We found that opening hours hadn’t started for the day, and so we went back into town and found St Michael’s Tower.  This is the oldest building in Oxford and it dates back to about 1050.  It was once part of the city walls and guarded the North Gate.  We climbed to the top of it and got a good view of the city.  It really showed how flat Oxford is, and how condensed.

We returned to Worcester College and it was very picturesque.  We weren’t allowed into the buildings and some of the grounds, but we did get to walk around the gardens, lake and cricket oval.  It is all so grand that it makes you wonder whether the students really appreciate how lucky they are to be studying in a place so steeped in history.














After that, we wandered around some of the streets that we hadn’t been down and ended up at the Museum of the History of Science.  This was very interesting too, although by this stage I was starting to get into information overload and my feet were starting to let me know that sitting down somewhere wouldn’t go amiss.  We emerged from the museum into the King’s Arms, which was a chance to get reinvigorated before walking back to our accommodation.

Dinner was just down the road from where we are staying at a place called Yeti.  It is a Nepalese restaurant and our table was right next to a picture of the Annapurna ranges taken from Pohkara where Siobhan stayed when she went there in April 2010.  The food was delicious too and as always with curries, we ended up eating too much. Still, we are probably getting good at that too.