Day 2 Oxford

Friday 10 May

We were probably in bed by 8 p.m. Fell asleep immediately. 

Then woke bolt upright at 11.30 p.m. (yes, p.m.!) thinking it was time to get up. 

Slept till 1.30 a.m. when the same thing happened. Stayed awake until 3.30 a.m. & FINALLY fell asleep until breakfast time. (Time difference with Australia is 9 hours.)

Had a very slow start today. Really yummy breakfast at our B&B. 

Packed ready for our walk that starts Saturday (tomorrow) and did some tidying up and re-organising. 

We left about 10 a.m. feeling a little more like our normal selves (whatever that means!?) and took the walk Kathryn had suggested into town along the canal. It was really peaceful and we had fun just ambling along looking at the gardens running down from the houses to the edge of the canal where long barges of various types and condition(!) were moored. The sun came out intermittently bathing everything (and us) in a delightful warmth that was very soothing.

We arrived into the centre of Oxford via the Gloucester bus station where we had arrived yesterday, although the market square today was empty, the market only operating on a Thursday.

We did stuff like banking and wound away through some of the more interesting University area until finally getting to the Information Centre where we booked a walking tour for 2 p.m. 

We enjoyed certainly the best coffee we've had since arriving (the ones to date have been of dubious quality), sitting in the sun (when it deigned to appear) and then 'walked our sox off ' with our very knowledgeable guide (a young Hungarian woman called Chila) who made it all so interesting.

We visited Wadham College (founded in 1610) and the Bodleian Library which is the largest university library in the UK, holding over nine million printed items. In its reading rooms, generations of famous scholars have studied through the ages among them 5 Kings, 40 Nobel Prize winners, 25 British Prime Ministers and writers including Oscar Wilde, C. S. Lewis & JRR Tolkien. 

We saw the Radcliffe Camera (known as the 'Physics Library' and is Oxford's most famous building) & the famous Christ Church (one of the largest colleges in the University of Oxford) and the Cathedral Church for the Diocese of Oxford. We did not go in, but we hope to when we return in a couple of weeks time after our Cotswolds Walk.

After the tour, we went back to see Exeter College, particularly noted for the lovely William Morris tapestry in the chapel known as the Adoration of the Magi (commissioned in 1886).

We met up with Kathryn for a great pub meal at The Eagle & Child (also known as the "Bird and Baby") & is famous for being a regular gathering place for the Inklings literary group which would meet to read and discuss various material, including their unfinished manuscripts - & of which Tolkein & C.S. Lewis were regulars. It was at one of those meetings (in June 1950) that C.S. Lewis distributed the proofs for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Overall, a much better day than yesterday when we had been so jet-lagged - and I had had some technical issues with our travel card (which CBA fixed overnight to my great relief!).