Oxford

Another scorcher in London today (33 deg) and we took a day trip to the city of Oxford, famous naturally enough for its world renowned university. Getting there was easy enough, it’s a journey of about an hour from Paddington station. Against my better judgement we decided to take the hop on hop off bus (I’m just not a fan...) but it gave us a really good overview of the main sites, University colleges and key information that enabled us to get a well rounded picture of the role the university plays in British and world events.

After doing almost a complete lap of the city we got off and walked back to a couple of the sites we were interested in and had something to drink at the Kitchen Bar in Magadalen College overlooking the canal where punting takes place. That was quite amusing as many people elect to have a crack at it themselves rather than have one of the students do the punting for them. If you find yourself here take my advice and let the experts take care of the punting, most all of the amateurs ended up going backwards or round in circles. Sadly though no-one fell off while we were there....

We took a short walk through the grounds before having lunch on the high street. Went to the covered market (don’t bother) and walked around town before heading back to the station to catch a train back to London about 2.40 pm. That was the start of a few delays.... The train turned up on time but then had a systems failure which meant all the electrics (and crucially the air-con) failed. That took fifteen very hot minutes to sort out and we arrived back at Paddington about 4 pm only to find that a points failure (no, I don’t know what that means either) had closed the underground line we needed to be on.

London was super busy as well, as it was a bank holiday and the Notting Hill Carnival was also on which is sort of like London’s version of Rio’s Carnivale.
Anyway, several roundabout subway journeys later we eventually made it back about 5.15....

Photos attached - my Wimbledon souvenir (couldn’t post my actual Wimbledon photos...); punting in Oxford; Magdalen College, Oxford Uni; Oxford’s own bridge of sighs...; Christ Church College, Oxford Uni; Oxford High St; the rear of the Bodelian Library, Oxford Uni; err, another old building that we liked the look of....; the Chapel in Magdalen CollegeEn savoir plus