May 20, 2016 is our 10th wedding anniversary. Josie had always wanted to see Oxford, having read many books and watched many dramas set in that town. This seemed like a perfect reason to take a train and get out of London for the day.
The trip from Paddington Station to Oxford took 56 minutes and cost us £25 (about $50 CAD) each, return. We enjoyed random views of the lush English countryside from the window of our train.
Aside from a brief encounter with the Rudest Man in England who was irrationally angry that nobody sat down quickly enough after boarding, the trip was uneventful and pleasant.
Upon disembarking in Oxford, we were confronted with an enormous bike parking lot. I’ve not seen a city filled with so many bikes and cyclists since I visited Leiden in the Netherlands in 2003.
In order to make the most of our time in Oxford, we signed up for a free walking tour from Footprints Tours. Our guide, a local Oxford resident and former student of the university, was personable and knowledgeable. He also walked very fast, even by our brisk standards.
The first point of interest was one of the only surviving Tudor buildings in Oxford, located on Cornmarket Street. In the early days this building was a brothel. Today, it’s a currency exchange and a Pret a Manger, a sandwich chain as ubiquitous in the UK as Tim Hortons is in Canada.
This unremarkable pothole on Broad Street in Oxford is, in fact, the Martyr’s Cross, intentionally left exposed to show the bricks at the (supposed) spot where Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was burnt at the stake in 1556 for refusing to convert from Protestantism to Catholicism.
Modern Oxford is much more peaceful. This is the view down Pembroke Street from St. Aldgate’s.
The University of Oxford is spread throughout the city and is comprised of more than 30 different colleges, each with their own buildings, grounds and traditions. This is Christ Church College (founded 1524) as seen from Broad Walk.
We saw this odd “flat” tree growing up the side of the college.
A gardener was hard at work keeping things pristine for resident Oxonians.
The River Cherwell passes between Broad Walk and the University of Oxford Botanic Garden.
This painfully scenic area inspired some of the locations in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings, including The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was a professor at Oxford and wrote his fantasy novels on the side, not really wanting them read for fear they would damage his reputation as a serious scholar.
This goose did NOT like having its photo taken and was in process of charging and hissing when I snapped this photo.
This is an entrance gate to Magdalen College (founded 1458) facing High Street in Oxford.
We passed by the famous Radcliffe Camera, built in 1737–1749 to house a science library.
This is one of the historic doorways in the Schools Quadrangle of the Bodleian Library.
After the tour, we paid a small admission to enter the Sheldonian Theatre where Oxford University ceremonies, including graduations, take place.
We were able to climb to the top floor of the theatre for nice views of Oxford. Check out those impressive beams holding up the domed roof.
From the top we had a view of the Bridge of Sighs on New Oxford Lane, where we witnessed a proud new Oxford graduate posing with distinction in his gowns.
The Oxford skyline is dominated by church steeples, and I assume it’s been that way for hundreds of years.
We popped into Blackwell’s book shop on Broad Street, founded in 1879. We’d been disappointed by Foyle’s in Soho, but this made up for it with endless floors and levels of books. Here I purchased a suitably scholarly book about traveler and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.
On the way to lunch, we passed by some ancient-looking memorials in the burial ground at St. Mary Magdalen church in the middle of Oxford.
After much walking, we rested our legs and enjoyed a nice meal at the Eagle and Child pub on St. Giles Street. It’s been there since the mid 1600s, give or take a few decades.
We took a photo of the view past the bar towards the main entrance, as seen from our table. Although the pub is now run by the pub conglomerate Nicholson’s, its historic character has been left intact and the menu of pub classics was pretty respectable — we had the glazed ham and a beef pie, both with mash, and a couple pints of bitter.
The Eagle and Child pub is most famous these days for being a regular haunt of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, writers who met there as the Inklings and shared both a fondness for fantasy and a dislike of spelling out their given names.
After a filling pub lunch, this nearby coffee truck was perfectly situated to wake us up for another round of sightseeing.
Last but not least, we visited the Museum of the History of Science where we headed straight to the basement to see its most famous exhibit: Einstein’s Blackboard. This blackboard was left untouched after Albert Einstein gave a lecture at Oxford on May 16, 1931.
Einstein’s Blackboard, as you can clearly see, outlines a simple model to explain the apparent expansion of the universe.
Thus educated, we returned to London.