Sunday 5 February 2017

A trip to Oxford

This week, our daughter in law is over in England on a business trip. On Saturday, The Better half and I met up with her in Oxford and we spent the day there together. We were able to park in the out of town Park and Ride, which is very close to the hotel they were staying in and meeting up there, we took the bus into town together.
The standard tourist's view of Oxford.  But it was a sunny day and it was just the right light for a photograph.
We wandered around the town centre and visited Blackwell’s, Oxford’s famous book shop.


This place if you have never been there, works entirely within the physics of Terry Pratchett’s ‘L space’, in as much, that when sufficient books are collected together space time is distorted and the inside of a library or in this case, book shop is much larger than the outside. The store front in no way tells you how large the interior is.
My ruck sack became a little heavier after our visit there, but being a nice sunny day for a change, from there we went for a walk around Christchurch Meadows. The river was a lot higher than usual, having had a week of rain on and off.

The river at Christchurch Meadows

The ducks and the snowdrops were both out
 After a second small foray into the shopping centre, we met up with her work colleagues.


The idea was to eat in Eagle and Child, a pub where Tolkien and C S Lewis used to spend their drinking time together, but it was very crowded, so we went across the road to the Lamb and Flag, to wait until everyone had arrived.  The Lamb and Flag is a pub that does not serve food, so once everyone had arrived and had a drink, every now and then someone would cross the road to see if a table had become free.  Eventually the crowd had thinned enough in the Eagle and Child for us to find a table for five.

Great Pub Grub 
 After we had eaten, we then took the Park and Ride bus back to where our car was and leaving them at their hotel, we returned home.