Oxford and around

Accommodation in Oxford turns out to be prohibitively expensive so we opt for a rural location NEAR Oxford for our next stay.

On our way we stop in at Blenheim Palace. The entry fees are steep - but I have some sympathy. The place is GIANTIC. I don't know what can have possessed the first Duke of Marlborough to build such a pile. No wonder the crown stopped funding him. And he only got to live in it for the last little bit of his life and even then it was unfinished.

We enjoy the capability Brown designed gardens and the Winston Churchill exhibition.  I am particularly jealous of the cascade - a waterfall designed to provide the maximum noise and a pleasing falling water effect from the end of the artificial lake. There's also a rather good multimedia tour of some upstairs rooms that cleverly feature the ghost of a lady in waiting to the first Duchess of Marlborough - who is credited with managing most of the construction phase (Kevin would say, "And the duchess has decided to project manage the whole process herself...").

Our hotel has a slight odour of horse manure on our first night - but we feel it just adds to the rural charm. There is room to spread out a bit in the room - which we appreciate.  And dinner is served at a bar in the premises and is both tasty and reasonably priced. Saves us worrying about where to go!

The next day the girl at the desk has worded us up on the Park and ride option for Oxford. Only a 5 minute drive away - all day parking is only £2 and a nice bus driver does all the tricky bits of navigating the twisty Oxford streets. We head in for a walk around town.

Oxford seems like the centre of all things English for me. We walk past the door of a college (no entry for the public) which looks ancient and is being propped open by a box of croquet equipment and watched over by a student.  We pass a coffee shop where a chap in a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbow is smoking a pipe as he chuckles to himself over a book about chess. I couldn't make this stuff up!

On a more practical note - we climb the tower of university church to get up close and personal with the gargoyles as well as a great view of the town. Narrow stairs and a narrow platform at the top that would be much more regulated anywhere else - but we enjoy it. We love all the ancient buildings and glimpses into green quadrangles.

The absolute highlight though is the Museum of Natural History. I love the building - which has a glass roof. Every column around the edge is made of a different type of stone and the carvings at the base and top of each represent the leaf of a different plant.we love the dinosaur skeletons I. The middle - including Stan the T-Rex.

At the back is the Pitt River museum - which looks just like the attic and basemen of an eccentric British explorer. The place is crammed with glass cases of everything from musical instruments to shrunken heads.  There is just too much to take in and we can only sample a small portion of one of the three floors of displays.

Then it is back to the hotel to reorganize our belongings in preparation for dropping off the car.