A tiny weekend away for your delectation. Unfortunately I am able to write this at my leisure as the train leaving Oxford is half an hour late, thus losing all my connections. Why does travel on a Sunday ALWAYS have to be like this? In Switzerland, I went up inside an Alp on Christmas Day without a problem.
Anyway, yesterday I did the journey with no difficulty. Booking a posh (ish) hotel in the middle of town felt like a good idea, as did going on the train. Although, as it turns out, I might have been better off driving to the Travelodge on the ring road and then going into town from the park and ride. Weather’s been nice so that’s a positive.
The hotel, after much looking, turned out to be a doorway beside a pub. My room (cheaper because it didn’t have a window) was in the basement with both air conditioning and a bathroom fan that couldn’t be turned off. Always travel with ear plugs is good advice – for life generally, as it happens.
Tourism and eating – another good motto.
The ostensible reason for this trip was to go to an exhibition of drawings at the Ashmolean. https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/bruegel-to-rubens-great-flemish-drawings. Lovely stuff. No photos because a lot of it would not come out well. However, I did see a few other things.
One of the advantages of going to nice places is eating in nice restaurants. Although, on a Saturday night, one should really think about booking more than half n hour in advance.
Sunday morning. Breakfast followed by church. Not a religious experience but a chance to listen to a major choir doing what it has been doing for hundreds of years. Oxford cathedral is part of Christchurch College and you have to walk through the college to get there.
I’m afraid there are no photos of the church, partly because I was there for the service and partly because my phone died on me. I had to spend £40 to get it repaired to access my rail ticket. After the service there were drinks in the walled garden and I had a nice chat with a man who is Professor of Ethics of Education. Who knew there was such a thing? Sounds like he moves in very high powered circles.
Now almost home after delays. Will be about an hour later than planned. 🙁
The Retirement Travels 
Good to hear that you had such an enjoyable time in Oxford, despite the logistical obstructions placed in your path.
By a strange coincidence, while you were in Oxford for an exhibition, June and I were in Cambridge for the same reason. In our case, “William Blake’s Universe,” at the Fitzwilliam.
Like you, we managed to do some other things like The Heong Gallery at Downing College, Kettle’s Yard and the Women’s Art Collection at Murray Edwards College.
Plenty of interesting things enjoyed by all of us!
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Your professor sounds very interesting – possibly a policy wonk, certainly someone who might turn up on Royal Commissions and such.
Thankyou so much for the pictures. They brought back a happy memory from just pre-COVID of a conference at the Bodleian – they gave us a sherry do ( I loved the protesting students overlooked by drinks bods) in the old music school which was used by the Harry Potter films as the Infirmary. I have to admit that post Morse/Lewis et al, I actually found walking alone down some of the lanes of an evening slightly scary.
The box is mind-blowing, but my favourite is actually the statue of St. Edmund in his garden.
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