“And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, she needs not June for beauty’s heightening.” —Matthew Arnold, Thyssi, 1865.
October in Oxford is a beautiful thing. The majestic architecture, the autumn trees, the chilly breeze, the sounds of the city at night. The first time I visited was only two months ago, when I explored the city with my mom and brother on our two-week excursion to England. Frankly, it was a rather overwhelming forty-eight hours. Since last weekend marked a four-day weekend of independent travel on our program, I had the chance to visit Oxford again.
As beautiful as it is, it can be overwhelming because there is so much to see and do. This is the place that saw the writing of Wind in the Willows, Chronicles of Narnia, the Lord of the Rings, and Alice in Wonderland; not to mention the filming location for Harry Potter, Endeavour, and countless others. In a literary city with almost eight hundred years of history, where do you start?! Today I’m going to share a few of the highlights of my weekend so you can get a taste of Oxford yourself.
Morning Walking Tour
This is the best way to see the city, but beware: the free walking tour is not actually free. When you finish the tour, your guide will ask you to tip whatever you think the tour was worth, and it’s a little awkward if you don’t hand over a few pounds. That being said, this is the quickest way to get a clear scope of the city.
The morning tours depart periodically from the Oxford Visitor Information Centre on Broad Street, just across from Balliol College. It was such a cool experience, because our group consisted of travelers from Germany, China, Sweden, Norway, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, the Netherlands, South Korea, and the United States. Our tour lasted almost two hours, but we learned so much about Oxford!
We walked past the Sheldonian Theatre and the Weston Library (which had an incredible exhibit on the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkein — definitely a highlight of the weekend!), and snapped some pictures by the Bridge of Sighs.
Our tour finished with a few moments in the breathtaking quadrangle of the Bodleian Library. Just through the southern door, we emerged to see the iconic Radcliffe Camera surrounded by the dreaming spires of Oxford.
Let me tell you, Oxford is not without its quirks. We learned about the competitive tradition of tortoise racing that occurs between Oxford colleges, showed us the exact pothole where the Oxford martyrs were burnt at the stake, and pointed out to oldest pub in Oxford (the Bear Inn, founded in 1242). We passed a chalkboard in Lincoln College that read “CROQUET HATH COME HOME,” signifying their croquet championships for 2018. It made me laugh. Also, a sign in a cafe window required new staff that “must be amicable and dextrous.”
And my personal favorite quirky story was the prestigious 1438 duck celebration of All Soul’s College, an “insight into their madness and genius,” said our tour guide, “but such is Oxford!”
Scriptum
One of my English major friends from college recommended Scriptum as being her favorite memory of Oxford — I remember she said she “was pretty sure the place was run by a magical fairy.” Since I have such a high regard for her, I was terribly excited to see it for myself. We found it, tucked away in a little snickelway around the corner from University Church of St. Mary’s.
The windows brimmed with curiosities: leather-bound classics, notebooks of all shapes and sizes and paper qualities, quill pens with lustrous feathers, candles, little plaster busts of famous authors, inkbottles, globes, magnifying glasses, maps, stationary, miniature hot air balloons, marionettes, sand hourglasses, book coasters, clocks and keys, baubles, and even a taxidermy badger!
If ever there was a real life Flourish & Blott’s, this is it. I confess that I perused for half an eternity before finally deciding to purchase an elegant copy of Wind in the Willows.
Oxford Covered Market
There are restaurants and cafes around every corner here, so you can’t really go wrong. If you’re looking to get a decent lunch for less than ten pounds, I’d recommend either going to Pret A Manger (famously sells ready-made sandwiches, soups, salads, and snacks) or stopping for something more authentically Oxford in the Covered Market. For lunch, I grabbed a Chicken of Aragon pie from The Pieminster. There’s also a wicked good gelato shop around the corner.
Bodleian Library Tour
Now, if you’re a bookish person like me, I recommend returning to the Bodleian Library and purchasing tickets for a tour. This is the official library of Oxford University, and it contains a copy of every single book published in the United Kingdom.
The quadrangle is full of architectural easter eggs, especially nods to various forms of architecture. The faces in the corners are carved in the likenesses of people who have either contributed to the academic world somehow or helped fund the building of the library.
The tour will take you into the Divinity Room, which was once the site of Oxford’s end-of-year interrogations/examinations. It also happens to be a filming site for Harry Potter and Shadowlands. The Duke Humfrey Library upstairs is a beautiful collection and it was also the Hogwarts library film site.
Walk to the Top of University Church of St. Mary’s
Right beside the Bodleian is the official church of Oxford University. You can pay a small handful of pound coins to climb up the narrow winding staircase that takes you to the tippy-top of the cathedral. 127 steps later, you emerge on a narrow parapet that afford a skyline view in every direction of the city. It is breathtaking! Dreaming spires indeed.
Tea at the Vault and Gardens
Chances are, you will probably be exhausted by this point. I would recommend that you, upon returning to the mortal earth again, stop by the cafe in the University Church gardens. It is a charming place called the Vault and Gardens. Once you fetch a tray of tea and a scone, carry it outside and find a table to enjoy the view of the Radcliffe Camera. Of all English traditions, I have fallen hard and fast in love with afternoon cream teas.
Explore an Oxford College
One does not simply visit Oxford without walking among the beautiful grounds of one of the colleges. Magdalene College requires an admission payment, but I paid it gladly because, dang it, this is C.S. Lewis’ old stomping ground! I wanted to see it.
I am so glad that I did. Magdalene College is easy to love. It feels like an old, thoughtful, steadfast friend. These are buildings and gardens designed for thinking and walking and breathing the quiet scents of good clean earth. I roamed the cloisters, hearing echoed voices of a choir practice in the chapel. Beyond the gardens, you can catch sight of the rooms where C.S. Lewis tutored, marked by colorful red geraniums in the window.
I finished the exploration with a wander down Addison’s Walk, with heavy gusts of wind sending October leaves skittering across the path. What a wonderful way to finish the day!
Truthfully, Oxford wasn’t entirely what I imagined it to be. But the thing is, I love the idea of Oxford. I love the idea of a space dedicated to learning and thinking in solitude, surrounded by beauty. The quadrangle was colored with crimson and gold.
Evensong at Magdalene
I explored the very reaches of the college grounds. Upon returning, I encountered a long queue of people gathering for evensong. On a whim, I decided to join, and it became a highlight of my weekend trip. Oh, it was like a glimpse of heaven — the choir’s harmonized voices, and the candlelight, and the echo of beautiful ancient places!
Dinner at the Eagle and Child pub.
No trip to Oxford is complete without stopping by the beloved Eagle and Child pub, the gathering place of the Inklings back in the day, when they would share their stories and manuscripts with each other. We ended up sitting in the very Rabbit Room itself, with the stooped ceilings and dark paneled walls,
And there’s always more to see!
Check out online tickets to the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra. We were able to find student discounted tickets online that only cost five pounds. It was a wonderful way to spend an evening.
Blackwell’s Bookshop is a world-famous store just across from the Weston Library that’s definitely worth a few minutes (or hours!) of exploration.
Blenheim Palace is the perfect day trip to take from Oxford. It is quite easy to reach by bus. After the morning tour of the palace, stop for tea at one of the many quaint cafes, and then spend the rest of the afternoon wandering through the beautiful surrounding gardens.
If finery and expensive tea rooms aren’t your thing, you can make an appointment to see C.S. Lewis’ old home, The Kilns, and walk to the church he attended, where he is buried as well.
There you have it! Thanks so much for joining me on this beautiful weekend excursion through the October streets of Oxford. As fun as it has been to wander around the city of dreaming spires, I’m looking forward to rejoining my study abroad group … this time for a month in the Lakelands!
Write to you all soon,
<3 Olivia Grace
