Tuesday 1 January 2019

14/11/18 Oxford to London (on the way home)


We checked out of the Lakeview Guest House for the last time, and braved the crazy Oxford traffic to get once more to our little hidden car park supplied by Brasenose College for a brief time.  

Thom was waiting for us at the end of the street as we turned in, and used his magic clicker to open the ancient gate in the arch for us again.

We walked in to Brasenose College with Thom and Laura to have breakfast in the huge dining hall once again (after helping ourselves, cafeteria style, to our cooked breakfast selections). 

The nose on the gate at Frewin Annexe- just like the one on the Brasenose door.


Since we had a couple of hours up our sleeve before we absolutely had to be out of Oxford and on our way, Thom and Laura considered the options and decided on a last walk experience. 



We started out by following the way that Laura would often start to ride when she goes to her lab in the Hospital area of Oxford (Headington), and then turned in the opposite direction to the one she would take, to access a narrow lane, which leads to the running and bike path which travels alongside the Cherwell River. This was a really lovely path on a still and mild day, with a bit of blue sky and the autumn colours all around.  As a mild breeze wafted the leaves were “snowing” to the ground.  What a lovely way to finish our holiday together.





Cricket pavilion just like the one at Lords- even the same distance to the pitch.


They showed us the ugly engineering building “it has the best view in Oxford because you can’t see the engineering building from  it”, the amazing multi-coloured brick Keeble college buildings (it used to be a rite of passage to steal a Keeble brick during your student years- even better if it was a blue brick) 

Keeble College


and the incredible Museum of natural history, with cathedral-like structure, and glass roof instead of dark one. 





The one last cuppa, a bit of a cry, big big hugs and another drive with just the two of us again.  Since we were flying out the next morning we had booked a hotel very close to Heathrow hoping to get some sleep in a real bed before the “overnight” trip to Singapore, where we knew we would not sleep and we would arrive effectively the next morning. We would need to survive till at least 3pm, when we would be able to check in at our hotel in Singapore.

Once more the car GPS was a great asset and brought us effectively to the hotel (where we dropped off our bags for holding) and then to the hire car office (where we dropped off the car).  
Since we were staying so close to Heathrow we had figured we could probably just walk back to the hotel.  The girl at the hire care place suggested that we take their free bus to terminal 5 and have a look around. We did this, and had a cup of tea and bought sandwiches there, while Trevor accessed the free wifi and we tried to figure out how to get back to the other terminals. After a bit of consideration we found the correct bus stop to catch a free  bus to take us to the main bus station (which services terminals 1, 2 and 3). 

Tomorrow we needed to leave from terminal 2, so it might be useful to be familiar with that area tomorrow morning when we were trying to get checked in and catch a plane.   Signage was not overly helpful here, but we managed to find somewhere to get a refund on our Oyster cards (public transport swipe cards used on metro and buses) and also to find the Singapore Airlines check in counter.  Now all we had to do was get home.  

Easier said than done.  After a false start or two we eventually resorted to asking the information people.  Apparently Terminal 2 is a “pedestrian free terminal”- which meant we could not walk home from here!!.  We caught yet another free bus back to our hotel after some frustration, reclaimed our bags from the crowded bag room and checked in.

We stayed in the hotel that night, availing ourselves of a glass of Aussie red (a bit hard to say any more than that) and a meal, before crashing into bed, knowing that we would have to be up early to get to the free bus stop in plenty of time in the morning.

No comments:

Post a Comment