Day Thirty-Eight - Oxford

We are moored quite close to the Oxford Rowing Club and it was hardly surprising that there were early rowers on the Thames. We had a lovely relaxing day getting to know Oxford using the City Sightseeing Bus again for their running commentary and a means to get around the city. It was hard to get our head around Oxford University. Unlike our universities in Australia where they are mostly on one campus there is no one campus in Oxford but thirty colleges placed throughout the city. It really is a university town with many bicycles and buses.
After our morning coffee at a cosy coffee house and a visit to the Information Centre we set out and visited the nearby Covered Market which has been in place since the seventeen hundreds. It comprised of rows of tiny shops selling a wide range of wares and little eating places tucked away in its little nooks and crannies. At eleven thirty we joined a small tour group to visit the Bodleian Library. It was established in the late fifteen hundreds and contains thousands of very old manuscripts and books and it was very impressive.
We had a late lunch at “The Eagle and Child”, a pub affectionately called “The Bird and Baby” where C.S. Lewis and Tolkien and other authors used to meet on a regular basis for a pint and to discuss their writing. It was a snug pub and we enjoyed a Lincolnshire curled sausage with potato mash and deep fried onion rings. We were starving and it fitted the bill on a wet day.
We went on a final tour on the bus and on the way back to the boat we called into Alice’s Shop. This was the shop Alice Liddell, the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford used to visit to buy barley sugar. Charles Dodgson based ‘Alice in Wonderland’ on Alice. The shop was filled with countless souvenirs based on the book as well as a range of sweets including barley sugar.
Photos: Henk outside “The Eagle and Child”; The Bridge of Sighs; Fancy patty cakes at a cake shop at the Covered Markets; In the Divinity School, Bodleian Library Building.