On the edge of the Cotswolds

We were planning on a trip to Windsor Castle but their exhibitions are closed until next month so we thought we'd check out the other University town for lunch and have our first foray into the Cotswold district.

Oxford, a town on the Thames where the cows could walk across and the first University Town in England.
The first Uni was established here in 1096 beaten only in the world by one in Bologna.
Cambridge is England's second University established in 1209 by those escaping religious exclusion at Oxford.

Oxford - Main Street - We didn't even go into the book store.

Oldest Building - Saxon Tower of St Michael
at the North Gate c1020CE

Crooked Tudor house across the street
from the Saxon Tower

Oxford seemed bigger than Cambridge with a very wide main street now paved off for pedestrians and it was full of people. We grabbed a Cornish pasty for lunch and ate on the run, people were much to busy to notice the pastry flakes on our chins in the press of the crowds. Although one woman noticed and asked if Willow and I would like to sign up for a 'styling experience' in London the following week!

Rowan Atkinson fan club members will be interested to know that Willow and Petal have now walked at least one street that Bean's creator did. He completed his Master of Science in Electrical Engineering at Queen's College in Oxford. Tony Abbott studied here in 1981 as a Rhodes Scholar. The current UK Prime Minister, David Cameron graduated with firsts in Political science and Economics at an Oxford College and Margaret Thatcher managed a 2nd class Chemistry degree here - apparently she spent more time in student union politics than her studies. More at http://www.oxforduniversityfilm.com/oxford-alumni.html

Christ Church Cathedral and dorms behind the English garden

Dinning Hall  M was impressed with Plum pudding for 1pound
2 sittings every evening for all students and Dons

Petal off to the sorting hat.

Gate Tower and Quad

We paid 14GBP to walk through Christ Church College (Ch Ch). The Canterbury city in Sth NZ is named after this college who had its first female students graduate in 1980. When we left, the queue to enter was back to the famous Christ church Meadow - what luck to be able to have walked straight in. Lewis Carol wrote Alice in Wonderland here and the gift shop was full of souvenirs from his fiction. Howard Goodall and Richard Curtis are also famous Alumni with their CDs and DVDs stocked in the shop. The stairway up to the dining hall was where Neville found his toad in the Philosopher's stone and the dinning hall was used as a model for Hogwarts. Many other fantasy and historical films have used this beautiful old place as a setting. I thought it interesting that a place who teaches the future clergy of England should sell merchandise from fantasies damned by many conservative Christians. Petal was delighted to content her pyromania cravings by being allowed to buy an advent candle with the dates of December marked down the side, not sure that she'll be quite so happy when she discovers that it is used to time prayers during the advent season!  http://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/visiting/harry-potter 

The College educated the clergy and politicians of England's elite in the three 'Greats' Classical Languages, Philosophy and History. They now have a much broader subject choice and student enrollment is not limited to the aristocracy. Henry VIII took the College property from Cardinal Wosley and rebuilt much as well as establishing a sister College(Trinity) in Cambridge at the same time. Christopher Wren designed the Gate Tower leading into Wosley's Quad. A bell called Great Tom was rung 101(the number of original students) times at midnight to announce curfew.  All the other College's had a curfew of midnight but because it takes 20 mins to ring the 101 peels Christ Church College students could stay out that much later. Now it is rung at 9pm Oxford standard time but ChCh students still have 12:20 as their curfew.

This is Bourton-on-the-water. Being the quintessential Cotswold it is very touristy but we are tourists so we loved it.
Looks like M, Petal and Willow will be another tourist's video.

Autumnal Ivy

One of the many places available for holiday rent

Driving from Oxford to Bourton-on-the-water took us through Little and Greater Barrington through narrow roads and tight corners. Beautiful little villages - if we'd just stayed put on the road for a while I'm sure we would have been surrounded by deer, rabbits, badgers and squirrels. Weekend afternoons are obviously a good time for locals to visit the pub because there were quite a few with very full car parks along the 10km road between the A40 and Bourton ...

The sun came out and the autumn colours glowed. There were lots of little shops that we enjoyed poking our noses into. Crafty stores that Willow dubs skip fodder shops and a model railway store for the boys. There was even the 'Home of Brum' with a motor and toy museum attached. Petal's favourite were the many sweet and ice cream shops. I liked the Christmas shop and found a non-chocolate, Biblical Advent calendar that wouldn't burn down the house. With the nearby Bird zoo the girls reckon this must be Granny Eden.

Nana would like this shop

Good Raspberry hand made chocs in here

Gramps might even enjoy a look through here

This little window is jutting out right over the strem

M telling another yarn over yet another cream tea.

20p needed for the nicest public loos I've seen in a while and very clean. After all that tea it was worth a visit before the trip back home. The weather was closing in and Charlie doesn't like being left alone in the dark.

Laurie Lee (1914-97) wrote this poem, he is from a village on the Western edge of the Cotswolds (Slad). He bought a cottage in his childhood village with the proceeds from his first book. Part of one that suits the autumn colours we saw follows.

Day of These Days

Such a morning it is when love

leans through geranium windows

and calls with a cockerel's tongue.

When red-haired girls scamper like roses

over the rain-green grass;

and the sun drips honey.

...

Such a morning it is when mice

run whispering from the church,

dragging dropped ears of harvest.

...

When no table is bare

and no beast dry,

and the tramp feeds on ribs of rabbit.

Reading:  A Curious Earth by Gerard Woodward -  Vintage Books 2007
Widower and retired art teacher nearly dies, finds a desire to paint again and reconnect with his children. He becomes obsessed with Rembrandt and decides that his wife's passing does not mean he is a dried up old fossil after all; although he does have difficulties convincing the ladies after losing his false teeth on the Channel crossing to Belgium. I am loving the word pictures put in the mouths and minds of an unlikely bunch of characters.

"All this time Aldous had spent looking at the cupboard, when in fact the cupboard had been looking at him, insistently, unblinkingly.  It took a while for him to accept this fact and the uncomfortable conclusion that resulted - that some old potatoes in his cupboard were more actively interested inlife than he was." p6

"Not all the pancreatitis sufferers were alcoholics. Some were very resentful of the fact that the illness should be associated with alcohol at all....One of them once confided in Aldous, assuming him to be one of their non-drinking number, 'It's like we've gone to the doctor's with a headache and been put in a lunatic asylum..." p37

"It made him laugh and the laughter, in combination with the tugging Channel gale, helped unseat that which he'd guarded so carefully before, had guarded so carefully all his life, but which this time was taken from him in a second - both sets. With a short rasp and slurp his false teeth were out of his head and snatched away by the wind, uppers and lowers both.  He made a grab at them but was far too late.  For what seemed like an hour, they hung in mid-air in front of him, glittering, whiplashing strings of spittle dangling from them.  They had rotated to face him, still in their pairing, smiling at him out of the sky, a grin without a face, receding, laughing at him, until they'd shrunk to two little white dots, enough to make (so he imagined) a visible splash as they entered the sea a hundred feet below and a quarter of a mile behind him."  p61-62.