26th May Oxford - History of Science, Blackwells Books and Pizza

Trevor and I had breakfast at the Tick Tock cafe near where we were staying , before heading on in to town to meet up with the others.

It was great to just arrive and be lazy together.
Eventually we pulled together a plan of sorts for the day and headed off to see some essentials of Oxford.

The first stop was Blackwells Books.  Blackwells is an institution in Oxford, having started in 1879 with a 12 foot square space. It has slowly increased its footprint and its reputation with institutions across the world,  and now surrounds the White horse Inn on three sides, taking up a considerable size area held together in a rabbit warren of rooms over various levels of shop and various specialities.

In 1966 the Norrington room was created. You enter what looks like a small shop on Broad street and work your way towards the back corner.   When you find the Norrington room you gasp in amazement. This room is HUGE!!!  It contains two and a half miles of book shelf and over 160,000 books. At the time of building it was the largest bespoke built bookroom in the world. It was built in partnership with Trinity College, who were excavating at the time.  The room was called the Norrington room after the President of Trinity at the time.

What a pleasure to see it and to browse in it.  A few more weeks to browse it it would not go astray.

Author talk in progress

looking across the room

 Next stop was the History of Science Museum, where we enjoyed marvelling at such things as Einstein's blackboard  (notes preserved on a blackboard from his visiting lecture on the expansion of the universe  in May 1939)

We saw lots of amazing metal instruments for measuring and studying the planets and time, and for navigating.

This is one of only two surviving examples of an equatorium in the world.

A chinese fire clock.  Threads are slowly burnt, allowing bronze balls to drop - which marks the passing of time. 

a fairly unimpressive entrance to a very interesting place. 

 Then we moved on to the Weston Library, where we first visited the small exhibition about the stone heads at the Sheldonian theatre.  The thirteen stone heads (seen below) stand on pillars facing the street and have been replaced twice due to erosion. They were first commissioned by Christopher Wren in the 1600s, and are thought to represent Roman emperors.  Oxford are currently searching for the old ones which were replaced, as no record was kept of them.  They have some photos of found ones - which look very sad and sorry for themselves parked in yards and woodland around the place.  Some are almost unrecognisable as heads at all.  The most recent replacement work was done in 1972 after two years of work by sculptor Michael Black.

The Weston also had an exhibition about 3D representation , showing how various artists have tried to represent 3D over the years . This included some amazing multi layer depictions of the human body, some 3D shapes made from folded paper which pop up out the pages of books, and also some original drawings by Leonardo himself! 

Also not to be missed at the Weston is their display of the Sheldon tapestry which has been preserved (well, parts of it have). This amazing 4 map series was commissioned  in the 1590s and shows maps of  Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire woven in wool and silk. 

This one has lost parts to moths, but is really beautiful and quite remarkable. It is not only a beautiful weaving but shows the stage of Cartography that was occuring at the time also.  It still covers a large portion of wall despite the bits missing. Each was about 6m x4m in size originally. 

By the time we had seen all these amazing things we were very tired, so we took ourselves home to Thom and Laura's place again and nestled in to eat delicious pizza and chat until bedtime (slightly earlier than the previous night) while continuing to drink many cups of tea.

Getting to Oxford 23/5 and 24/5

It is hard to tell where one day ends and another starts when you are travelling.  The times changes somewhere, the food arrives, you try to sleep, you cry your way through movies and more movies ... Well, that's how I do it anyway.

We made it to Oxford via Melbourne and Abu Dhabi with Ben.  We didn't sleep much.  We felt sick by the time we got here (as usual).  It was good to get to bed last night and have a sleep.  We made it to 8pm before we dropped into bed.

Highlights of the trip were:

• painted pandas at Melbourne Airport

Trev acting like a panda

cute one for Regina

• Travelling with Ben  (much nicer to have someone you know and love in both the seats you are next to) 
• smoking rooms at Abu Dhabi!!

• The food was OK on the flights (Etihad) 
• Our bags made it in one piece (all of them) and undamaged. - I always consider this to be a miracle.
• A pleasant roadside stop for refreshment - and a lovely little english lake to look at with huge fish and yellow irises growing along the sides of it.

the guys on their stag party are just leaving in the background (with inflatable doll) as Trev and Ben ponder the fish in the lake. 

• SEEING THOM AND LAURA (Biggest highlight) 
• a lovely walk along the canals and rivers to give Ben a look at Oxford and to keep us all awake.

canal rules

lovely studio overlooking the canal.  I could sit and write poetry here I think. 

allotments - established during the war for people to grow what they needed in order to live. Thriving at this time of year. 

Port Meadow

Girls who had been "trashed" after their final exams were just finished taking a swim at the swimming hole to wash off the worst of the silly string, food, shaving cream etc. and getting back into their black Oxford gowns

 Apparently you wear a white carnation to your first exam, pink ones in the middle exams and a red one to your last exam.  Then when people see the red carnation they can congratulate you (your friends can also trash you)

This tree looked like it had spider webs all over it - the fine white mesh is hanging on the tree. see pictures below. 

beautiful blue irises beside the canal

• A brief tour through Oxford streets (because why not)  - including the Bodleian library with it's amazing ancient stonework and doors

• Dinner at the college (informal) so we saw the inside of that amazing dining hall all over again).
• Giving Thom his Christmas present from Grandma (Aussie chocolates are not the same as English ones) Aussie are better.

Enjoying Aussie chocolate - note the HSS gift quilt in the background - still in constant use. 

It is great to see the place in the spring.  The land is so lush and green with plants growing crazily.  Especially in contrast to our land with the crops just trying so hard to take hold with the tiny rain that we have had in oz... This world is such a contrast!

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.