Oxford Outing

We haven't been to Oxford for quite a while. There is more than enough there to keep us busy. A good shopping centre, several good theatres (The New Theatre and Oxford Playhouse, along with Creation Theatre which doesn't have a theatre building of its own.) The Ashmolean Museum is the oldest public museum in the world as well as the Pitt Rivers and the Natural History, all enough to give anybody who visits them hours of amusement. We left home early on a bright and not particularly sunny morning in order to make the most of our day. Carol has only two more days left of her summer break (going back to Milton Keynes Academy on Friday for a training day.) so we wanted to make the most of the day. We stopped off at Morrisons petrol station at Westcroft as they seem to have the cheapest petrol price at the moment and then drove out on Standing Way towards Buckingham. We eventually arrived at the Water Eaton park-and-ride and parked the car and then boarded the bus and rode into the centre of Oxford. This is all so much easier and stress-free when you know exactly where to park the car and arrive at the centre of a town or city knowing you don't have to hunt for a parking space or pay out something astronomical to park. Well, at least it's better for the environment to have people use a bus rather than have so many cars travelling into the centre of towns and cities. It was a very clean bus and the journey was no more than ten minutes at the most.  We got off opposite the New Theatre. Interesting to see what's on there at the moment. 'The Rocky Horror Show.' Not actually something I'd want to see. We had coffee in a Costas and then walked the short distance to the Ashmolean Museum. It opened at 10 o'clock and as we were early we had to wait outside. Pleasant enough, sitting on convenient benches. We then spent just over an hour browsing the museum. Saw an amazing Chinese screen, with lacquer-work all over it. Also went to the Victorian galleries and saw many well-known paintings by Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Burne-Jones and others. It's interesting to be able to see these works of art at such close quarters rather than in a book. A couple of quite spectacular painted pieces of furniture, one a bookcase and another a sort of wardrobe. I think you'd need a very large room to house both items. We also saw the lantern that Guy Fawkes was holding at the time he was arrested in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament as part of the Gunpowder Plot. Amazing to see such a simple item from a major  incident  from history. It just surprised me to see how basic it was and to think it was thought important enough to preserve in a museum collection.

We spent time looking in shops and at lunch time we went to Prezzo, an Italian restaurant near the Castle. We had been given a gift voucher by Kendra as a 'thank you' for when she had stayed with us earlier in the year. This was in a very pleasant spot and we sat outside under a beautiful wisteria and ordered spaghetti carbonara. It was virtually empty of customers when we arrived but as we left it was really filling up with people.

We walked back towards the main shopping streets. Carol had compiled a quite extensive list of things she needed before she returned to work on Friday. This required visiting Blackwell's book shop in Broad Street. We visited Waterstones as soon as we had arrived in Oxford. She wanted a copy of E.M. Forster's novel "A Room With A View" but the only edition they had was paperback. She wanted to get a hardback copy and Waterstones didn't have one. We walked towards Blackwells and saw hoards of people being taken on walking tours of the city. Similar sights in Cambridge the other week when we were there. Fortunately, none of those people attempting to sell punting on the river which we found somewhat aggressive in their tactics.

We spent quite some time in Blackwell's. We discovered that the shop contains what is supposed to be the largest room in a shop in the world, with several miles of shelving. Well, this is according to their website. I was also unaware that Heffer's bookshop in Cambridge is part of the same company. We visited a branch of Blackwell's when we went to Newcastle last year to help Daniel, my stepson, to move flats. A considerable amount of time was spent in this shop. We love books, so it's hardly surprising. There was a great offer on Oxford Classic paperbacks: buy one and get one free. We Bought "Emma" by Jane Austen and we got "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad free. This novel has recently been adapted by BBC Television and so I was keen to read it. It was somewhat amusing when Carol asked an assistant 'Do you have "A Room With A View"?' Well, we thought it was quite amusing and I think the assistant got the joke. It turned out that they had the same paperback edition that Waterstone's had.

We walked back towards the centre of Oxford and decided that we were in need of a cup of tea and went into Debenham's, principally to use their toilets. A long queue for the 'ladies' but that's what you get when you don't provide adequate facilities. Sat and drank our tea in a rather cramped area near the escalators. It was a branch of 'Patisserie Valerie.' There is a branch in the Milton Keynes Central Shopping Centre. It's quite expensive but they have a great range of food on offer.

By the time we'd finished in Debenham's, after Carol bought some ear rings, we decided that, because we had walked so far and it was exceptionally warm, we would catch the bus back to the park-and-ride carpark and return home. 

Bus Trip To Oxford

Being without the car certainly has it's problems, but in some ways it has it's up-side. It means that we have to find some other way to get out and about if we want an outing. So we decided on taking the bus to Oxford, a city we've visited on several occasions. But, before we left the house we did out shopping on-line through Sainsbury's website. Another job which is made easier because they do all the hard work for us, pick the items we order for us and deliver when we want. What could be better? We had a discount voucher which was emailed soon after our last order, for £9, that is, if we spent £60 or more. Which is what we managed to do, and then booked a delivery slot on Saturday for 6.30 p.m. It's surprising how quickly you can do the order now we've got a 'favourites' list on the website and it craftily knows our 'likes' from what we buy the most often. From using our Nectar card which collects data every time we shop using the thing.

We left the house at around 9.15 and caught the bus into central Milton Keynes. I didn't realise that my bus-pass wasn't valid for free transport before 9.30, so I had to pay 90p which was a surprise. We got into the shopping centre and just managed to miss the Oxford bus, the X5. The next one was due to leave from outside the Point at around 9.45, so it gave us just enough time to nip into the shopping centre to get some cash out of a cash machine and then go into Boot's as Carol wanted some travel sickness tablets. Last time we went on the bus to Oxford, for some reason she felt travel-sick, so some sort of tablet was the solution. But in Boot's we could see anything on the shelves and had to go to the pharmacy counter as it was probably going to be the sort of tablet you could only purchase 'over the counter.' There was one woman at the till, seemingly gossiping to the assistant who was really not interested in speeding up the transaction and was more interested in the conversation that worrying about us standing behind. The time was approaching rapidly for us to get back to the bus stop, probably less than 10 minutes, so we left the two gossiping. Not the sort of thing I would have expected from Boots as they generally seem to employ staff who do a good job. Bu this particular staff-member wasn't interested in customer care, more in the conversation with her friend. We hot-footed it from the premises and got to the bus stop ready to board the bus.

It took a good deal longer than the last time we used the X5, probably because of the amount of traffic on the road.  Did it really matter if it did, as we were just pleased to be out of the house and able to enjoy the sunshine. After the rain we've had over the past few days, it was a real pleasure, and we intended to make the most of it. But it's a great journey, and, being a good deal higher up than the car, you see things that you wouldn't otherwise see. I must say we are spoilt around her with some fantastic landscape. Probably not as dramatic as, for example, Yorkshire or Devon or Dorset, but, all the same, really beautiful. We wanted a snack on arriving in Oxford. We managed to find the perfect place in a small cafe called Taylor's of Oxford (apparently it's a chain of cafes and they have a few other branches throughout Oxford, we later learned) and had coffee and filled toasties. It's in Gloucester Green, just behind the bus station. Don't ask me why it's called that. It's a large square which has shops and restaurants all around it and nothing to indicate 'green' in the slightest. No grass or even trees. Never mind. We shall remember this place and use it again when we visit Oxford again in the future. Not to be confused with another Taylor's, the tea and coffee people who are related to Betty's in Harrogate, another fantastic catering establishment we enjoy when we visit Yorkshire. Having revived ourselves after our journey we made our way to the Ashmolean Museum and spent some time meandering around this fantastic place. You can get quite lost within this museum and forget the time it is so enthralling. More wandering and ending up in the covered market which Carol had wanted to visit. She is currently looking for a new handbag to replace the one she has at the moment which is not large enough to carry everything she wants. She saw one she liked but may look around to see what else is on offer. Then we found a shop and cafe called Pieminister, which sells really amazing and tasty pies of different descriptions. We tried some of these pies some while ago when we went to Bicester Avenue garden centre and I didn't know they had cafes as well as selling through Sainsbury's. We bought a couple of their pies with different fillings for our evening meal. another wander around the city, ending up in  Blackwell's, one of those bookshops in which you can loose yourself and you go up and down stairs and into so many different departments that it's a sort of maze. I managed to come across a good selection of books which I would probably buy and read, but not on this occasion. So time was indeed marching on so we decided we'd seen all we wanted but before we left Oxford we found a Cafe Nero branch and had a cold drink each and got back to the bus station and caught the next X5 back home to Milton Keynes. The traffic was getting quite busy as we left Oxford and got back on the main road out of the city and were only too glad that we neither of us had to drive! The bus arrived at the railway station and, once we'd alighted we had to find a number 5 going towards Bletchley. This duly arrived and we found it almost completely crowded and had to sit at the rear, which meant over the engine. A clapped-out bus it turned out to be and it was hot where we had to sit, do doubt because it was over the engine. I was surprised by how jerky and uncomfortable the ride was back home to Eaglestone and it seemed that every bump, pot-hole in the road and jolt made by the road-surface contributed to a really uncomfortable ride. This, not helped by the speed bumps around the city centre. It seems amazing that the roads around Milton Keynes, which is supposed to be a modern city, should be in such a poor state of repair.