An afternoon in Oxford

Saturday, 4 August 2007
Day 36
Oxford, England

At times like this I marvel about the richness of time in the human experience. Just when I begin to delude myself into thinking that there can’t be another awe-inspiring sight within a day’s travel of London (I know we are really beginning to wear down!) there is Oxford!

We took a mid-morning train and arrived in Oxford after about an hour. The station is just outside the city center so a brief walk took us to the center of the action. This is a “happening” place—at least on a Saturday in the academic off-season. It must be during the school year too, with some 30,000 students in a community of 145,000 residents. According to our tour map, Oxford University doesn’t have a campus, per se; it consists of 39 independent colleges and six “halls”—with between 450 to 100 students each. The proverbial college town! The university provides the libraries, laboratories, services, staff and other common requirements. So Oxford is somewhat like Cambridge, except much larger and set in an urban environment teeming with activity—at least during this visit.

It is immensely old, dating back as far as the 8th century—with the first official reference in 912 AD. The University dates to 1188! (eat your heart out Harvard!)

In the course of an afternoon, even a long one, it is not possible to absorb much more than a impression of this fantastic place—with every turn of the corner revealing a new college, more fantastic architecture and crafted beauty that embraces the senses. I don’t want to bore my friends with each step of our journey; rather point out a few special experiences along the way.

We climbed into the tower at St. Michaels at Northgate, part of the oldest surviving structure in Oxford, and got a bird’s-eye-view of the city. There were towers and steeples in every direction. For our time there we walked through ancient streets past many of the more famous colleges of Oxford—Christ Church, Trinity, Queens, Magdalen, Merton …on and on. The sheer grandeur and number of places was overwhelming. Back nearer to the city center, we walked down Queen’s Way and under the “Bridge of Sighs”, a replica of the original in Venice, and into a courtyard surrounded by astounding architecture and historic structures, including the Radcliffe Camera (“room”), the Divinity School, the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin and many others. After a couple of hours, we arrive back at Broad St. and at the door of Blackwell’s Book Store—a world famous source of books. We browsed around inside for a while and saw the sign directing shoppers to the Norrington Room, a vault containing over 160,000 volumes! Since this is “way too many” to check as baggage on our flight home (ha!), we decided to browse a little more then, being thoroughly exhausted from the long walk and bright sunshine, caught the next train back to London. Of course the sights and experiences of Oxford will stay with us for a lifetime!