Sunday 7th October 2018, Bletchington, near Oxford
Yesterday was WET! We woke to a fine mizzle which grew heavier throughout the day. It was also bitterly cold and miserable, a complete contrast to the warmth of the previous day in Cambridge.
We drove on southwards. At Milton Keynes we decided not to stop as it was teeming down and the town seemed nothing but identical roundabouts and roadside verges. At Buckingham though we stopped. It seemed rather a pleasant little town, famed primarily for its own private, fee paying university. It was their open day for new students but we became absorbed in the town and decided not to cut our visit short attempting to fit in too much. Besides, private university or not, we suspected nobody would really assume we were aspiring students hoping to be awarded a degree in Hospitality Management or Manicure and Economics.
The town struck us as welcoming, clean, interesting and far nicer than we expected. Parking cost 50p for three hours during which time we saw most of what the town had to offer, including a weekly street market, the parish church and the town's historic prison with a free display of owls for the local children. Both owls and children looked decidedly fed up with the cold and the wet! We also enjoyed lunch in a bustling little vintage cafe managed by three delightful young waitresses before continuing our journey to the campsite we have been using for the past couple of nights.
Buckingham Chantry. Buckingham.
Old Gaol. Buckingham.
We were so cold and fed up with driving in pouring rain along unfamiliar roads with countless roundabouts, where too frequently we got into the wrong lane, that we arrived here with considerable relief. It's a very nice site, more reasonably priced than many we've used and offering free wifi that actually works properly!
This morning, following instructions from the campsite manager, we drove to the Oxford “Park and Ride”. Here our troubles began in earnest. There were height restrictions and Modestine was too tall by 1 cm to pass under the barrier. The parking area was huge and we searched for a parking place for overheight vehicles. We found one okay but ... it was kept locked on Sundays! The only place she'd fit was the parking for the station rather than the buses, administered by a different company! Having parked we then discovered the only way to pay was by phone. We are useless with mobiles and only have a "pay as you go". I rang the displayed number for queries and got an automated voice when I needed a human. It seems I needed to download an app in order to pay! In any case I cannot see my screen properly in sunlight and ended up in a complete muddle. I was eventually told by an automated voice to hang up and they would hold my details so I could ring them back and continue to payment once I'd downloaded the necessary app. I was a furious and quivering wreck by this time and was all set to give up and drive away. Ian is of stronger stuff than me though. We planned to visit Oxford and visit it we would! We left a note in the car asking them to email us letting us know what we owed and how to make payment - if they could expect us to use their method of payment we could expect them to use ours. We told the bus driver we'd been unable to park properly as the over-height parking area was locked and there was nobody human to contact. He said it happened and not to worry. So we got on the bus and have spent a really full and enjoyable day in Oxford. On our return we again tried unsuccessfully to sort out payment and even discovered a machine intended to accept real money! Relieved we attempted to pay. Up shot a message informing us the machine was out of order and to pay by phone! So we gave up and left. We will probably receive a fine. I know the world is changing but it's the first time we've experienced this situation and we just do not use phone technology. Earlier we’d used a cafe in town and almost everyone around us was busy communicating on their phone, ignoring their table companion who was usually also tapping away on their phone. Were they texting each other across the table? It seems mobiles are destroying human contact and direct speech. A human would have solved our problem this morning immediately and we would not have had our day spoilt because we hadn't discovered how to downloaded the free app from Oxford City Council! (To date we have heard nothing more. Probably they are as terrified of speaking to people who don't understand phones, as we are of those that do!)
However, we had a very good day in Oxford, once we forgot our traumatic experience. It is years since we have been into the city, though when Neil was a student at Keble we would occasionally drive up to see him for the weekend, and when he and Jeev were living in Didcot we'd frequently visit the city. Both Ian and Neil were at Keble and the college has many happy memories for both of them.
Like Cambridge most of the colleges are no longer generally open to the public. More though allow free visits than at Cambridge and all that we looked at allow visitors into the quads without needing to pay. Below are a selection of some of the colleges we saw today. Many we have visited in the past, when colleges were more laid-back about visitors. We also visited the Bodleian Library, the Radcliffe Camera, the Sheldonian Theatre - where Ian and Neil accepted their master's degrees together. Ian had never bothered to collect his, but when Neil was to receive his, Ian joined him and we took his elderly mum to see the two presentations, so it was really more for her sake than Ian's. It was also at the Sheldonian that Neil and Jeev were presented with their doctorates together, Neil for chemistry, Jeev for biochemistry. Then we shared the happy event with Jeev's parents, shortly before Neil and Jeev married. So the university holds many happy and important memories for us as a family.
Around the city a half marathon was being run by some 8,500 people from the city and the university. One even ran dressed as a huge, inflated chicken while another was seventy eight years old and we joined in the cheering as he crossed the finish line in excellent time. The chicken also finished not long behind him. There was a good sense of integration around the city this afternoon as Town and Gown rubbed shoulders, cheering on the runners.
Half marathon. Oxford.
Half marathon, Oxford.
Ian wanted to look in at the Bodleian Library as the chicken run passed by.
Bodleian Library. Chicken marathon. Oxford.
Bodleian Library. Five orders. Oxford.
Bodleian Library. William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke (1580 - 1630)
Bodleian Library. Parry exhibition. Oxford.
Bodleian Library. Parry exhibition. Oxford.
Castle. Oxford.
Westgate. Oxford.
Cherwell River. Punts. Oxford.
Below are some of the colleges and University buildings we visited today. Many sparked memories for Ian who had friends in several of them during his time in Oxford. He is even today in touch with some, while others remain life-long friends. They can share his memories here.
Oxford Union. Gladstone Room. Oxford.
Christ Church College. Oxford.
Merton College. Oxford.
Merton College. Oxford.
Magdalen College. Oxford.
Magdalen College. Oxford.
Examination Schools. Oxford.
Merton College. Oxford.
Oriel College. Oxford.
Queen's College. Oxford.
Saint Edmund Hall. Oxford.
New College. Oxford.
New College. Oxford.
Bridge of Sighs. Oxford.
All Souls College. Oxford.
All Souls College. Oxford.
Radcliffe Camera. Oxford.
Wadham College. Oxford.
Saint John's College. Gardens. Oxford.
Saint John's College. Oxford.
Saint John's College. Oxford.
Taylorian Institution. Oxford.
Balliol College. Oxford.
Balliol College. Oxford. Oxfordshire.
Trinity College. Oxford.
Clarendon Building. Oxford.
Sheldonian Theatre. Oxford.
We also managed to fit in a visit to our favourite museums, the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Oxford University Museum. They are housed together and the building itself is part of the museum. I mean, the columns that hold up the building are each from a different area of Britain and are examples of the stone to be mined or quarried there. The building is an outstanding example of Victorian architecture which made use of the new materials available. The main gallery for example, has a framework of cast iron, the very latest material at the time of the building's construction. Within it has rocks dating back to the formation of the earth, some 4.5 billion years old, right through to a skull of Tyrannosaurus Rex, skeletons of chimpanzees and other primates and stuffed tigers, brown bears, armadillos and other fauna, even a dodo, all resident in the museum from Victorian times. Upstairs in the galleries there are examples of beetles, spiders, bees, cockroaches and many other creatures from the insect world. Behind the University museum is the Pitt Rivers museum, an eclectic collection of objects, gathered together and crowded into display cabinets. The museum contents form a fascinating collection of one person's enthusiasm to collect anything and everything. There are musical instruments, tribal head dresses, weapons, tools, clothing, writing materials, ceramics, information about mining, smelting and minerals. It's impossible not to become absorbed in the properties of teflon or gypsum, even if you don't know the first thing about the subject!
University Museum. Exterior. Oxford.
University Museum. Main hall. Oxford.
University Museum. Tyrannosaurus Rex. Oxford.
Keble College. Chapel. Exterior. Oxford.
Keble College. Great Hall. Oxford.
Keble College. Library. Oxford.
Keble College. Oxford.
Keble College. Oxford.
Keble College. Oxford.
Keble College. Great Hall. Oxford.
Keble College. Chapel. Oxford.
Keble College. Chapel. Oxford.
Keble College. Chapel. The light of the world by William Holman Hunt, Oxford.
Keble College. Chapel. Oxford.
Keble College. Chapel. Oxford.
Keble College. Chapel. Oxford.
Keble College. Chapel. Oxford.
Neil and Jeev married out in Sri Lanka in 2003. On their return the nuns held a celebration and blessing in the grounds of the convent for their families and friends, particularly those unable to make the journey out to Sri Lanka for the wedding. The sisters were superb, blessing their future lives together and proving dramatically with a symbolic outdoor chemical experiment, that two very different substances coming together act as a catalyst on each other to produce something quite spectacular! Alas, the convent no longer exists and it is probable that the nuns, elderly then, have also passed on. Their memory though remains very fresh in our hearts.
Norham Gardens. Nunnery. Oxford.
We found the house, still huge and beautiful, now owned by the University but looking much as we remembered. We’ve all moved on though and the magic has gone.
Weary but delighted with our day we returned to the same campsite for another night. Despite the stress of this morning it has been a very good day.
