We left Saturday morning for Oxford for the MLK weekend, because John got Monday off. We found and parked at our B&B and walked into town, about half a mile. We had a pub lunch and then started following a self guided SCLewis walk. Of course we were distracted by everything, the beautiful buildings and shops etc. We found the grave of the man who wrote The Wind in the Willows, and Charles Walter Stanley Williams, a poet.
The weather was beautiful but very cold. We warmed up in shops. John looked for a tweed flat cap and I looked for an Oxford tea towel.
We came back to our room for a rest before dinner, and brought in our bags. We packed lightly. We walked to the Duke of Monmouth pub for dinner, and got seated right before others came in and there were no seats left. We did the Oundle thing and called ahead for a reservation. In Oundle, even if you walk into an almost empty place, they act sad that you hadn’t reserved first. Funny…only to us, I guess. So I’ve been adding local pubs to my contact list, to make people happy. I know.
On Sunday we continued with the CSLewis tour, and had a pub lunch at Eagle and Child, where the Inklings used to gather and read their writings to each other. Surely this tiny pub hasn’t changed much….At 1:30 we met up with others for our Morse/Lewis/Endeavour tour of Oxford. We peeked into many of the colleges, sat and listened to someone playing an organ for awhile in a chapel, saw a dining hall, & several “quads” grassy areas that end up being large walled gardens within colleges. We walked a million miles this weekend, but feel it was all worth it! We also took a long walk along the Cherwell river, which joins the Thames in Oxford. Again beautiful and cold. We had 1 last pub lunch then drove to High Wycombe for a stop on the way home.
The base where I went to high school is no longer there, its now a housing development, but we parked and took a good walk along the Rye, which is a large grassy field with a canal type pond at one end. When in high school, we mostly left base through a “known” break in the fence, then walked down the hill through the forest, over a little bridge, across the rye to town, or train station to London or wherever. The bridge was no longer there, the canal was much wider than it had been, but the trees and woods were familiar, but much thinner as you could see the housing development through the trees. Anyway, it was a good stop.
I’m thinking our next weekend away in February may be on the Norfolk coast. We’ll see.