Roaming Tales

This is a guest post from Roger Norum, a travel journalist and cultural anthropologist based in Oxford. He writes regularly for British and American travel magazines and newspapers, and is a frequent author for Rough Guides. Roger is leading a four-day-long travel writing seminar in western Norway with Creative Escapes. He will teach similar writing courses in France and Morocco in the fall. Visit www.creative-escapes.co.uk for more information.

It was Yeats, if I’m not mistaken, who once waxed romantically, “I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.” Yeats, who taught at Oxford after World War One, was very familiar with the sandstone Gothic spires and quiet streets of this most graceful, ravishing and operatic of cities. Now that the banks of the Thames once again at ante-diluvian levels and student life in full bloom, lazy spring Sundays are perfect for taking in all the romance of the world’s most magical university city.

Thanks to daylight savings time, the Oxford sun now rises around 7am, making an early morning jog through the sprawling Port Meadows the perfect wake-me-up. You’ll run along the pebbled bank of the Isis, a Thames tributary, passing canal houseboats, thatched whitewashed villages and elderly tweed-clad locals puttering about the town allotments – small patches of public gardening space handed out to whomever wants to tend them.

9am The only souls singing on a Sunday are the talented, radiant few who make up the Christ Church Cathedral’s mixed choir. After the non-denominational service, stroll about the manicured grounds of Christ Church, one the university’s oldest colleges and known best for inspiring the characters in Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll taught maths here).

11am A late brunch at the Covered Market is as good an introduction to student life as any. Snag a corner seat, order up a rich breakfast of beans, toast and greasy English bacon and watch as the colorful cornucopia of local student life streams in: posh, well-coiffed Brits rubs shoulders with the swarthy sons of Emirate sheikhs and ascotted Erasmus students.

1pm Hop aboard a red double-decker bus for a tour of the university colleges and departments. Cheesy and formulaic? Maybe. But in just two hours you’ll have covered what on foot would have taken weeks and will command more local history than most Oxford dons.

3pm Head down Cornmarket, the city’s central pedestrian walkway, towards some proper High Street window shopping (most shops are closed on Sundays), then get lost among Oxford’s narrow, cobbled medieval alleyways, sandwiched between buildings built of glimmering local sandstone. Nip around to Brasenose Lane off Turl Street to take in Bodleian Library and the adjacent Radcliffe Camera, two gorgeous Gothic buildings. But you need to be a student to see inside (the lengthy application for entrance to the university can be picked up a few blocks away at Wellington Square).

4:30pm Oxford’s most famous local lagers, ales and bitters flow freely on Sundays, and a drawn out weekend afternoon pub crawl among the city’s age-old pubs is a local tradition for would-be academics and locals alike. Pop in at the King’s Arms to eavesdrop on the latest college gossip and ogle would-be Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners sipping on Addlestone’s, a local cider that tastes so close to freshly squeezed apple juice that you’ll barely realise it’s 8% alcohol.

5:45pm Dodge the students pedaling giddily about the quiet, leafy streets of North Oxford on your way to the Gardners Arms on Plantation Road, one of the city’s best spots for classic intellectual ambience. If it’s cold enough out, they might just light the stone fireplace. The pub is the site of Oxford’s best known vegetarian restaurant – last order taken at 6pm on Sundays.

8:30 Post cibum (Latin for ‘after the meal’), what better way to test your knowledge against local smart alecs than flaunting your wits at the Gardners Arms’ weekly pub quiz. To keep your intellectual powers at their peak, order a Reverend James, a Welsh pale ale popular with local theology students.

10:15pm Stop in just in time for last call at the Eagle and Child, a short walk away and Oxford’s second oldest pub. Perch yourself in the same seat where J.R.R. Tolkien met for years every Sunday with colleague C.S. Lewis. The pint of choice here: Wadworth, a hoppy wheat beer that goes down surprisingly smoothly with very little bitter aftertaste.

11pm Return to your creaky wooden canopied bed at the Bridgeox Bed and Breakfast, a tiny inn run by a family that has occupied the building for over 600 years running.

Photographs by Caitlin Fitzsimmons

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