anarchist_nomad | Punting, Punting, Punting on the River

More update on recent events during

resourceress's visit:

Thursday evening we went to St. Giles Church to look in on all this bell ringing. We watched the change bell ringers do their thing and hope to come early enough for a lesson this coming Thursday. After the bell ringing was over, we went out to a nearby pub, the Royal Oak, for drinks and conversation with three of the ringers.

Friday evening, we got together and had a snack of nachos at a different pub, the King's Arms, before meeting the same three bell ringers for an outdoor theatre performance of The Tempest in the Trinity College gardens. Good show... (nicely done, Bill!) and we got to wander about in the college garden, which is not something we would normally have access to.

Saturday, we went to the Oxford Castle, which doubled as a prison from as early as 1071. In fact, for the past few centuries, it only served as a prison, and no longer as a home for the royalty. However, ten years ago the prison was closed... and it now serves as a luxury hotel. Seriously. Three cells are combined into one guest room -- two for the bedroom and one for the bathroom -- with rates starting at £140/night (or about $260). Hoy vey! Some torrential rain trapped us at the castle for a bit, so we went into the Krispy Kreme and ordered a dozen donuts to tide us over. Very surreal. Eventually the rain let up, and we wandered to the Ashmolean Museum, which claims to bethe first public museum in Britain. We made our way through the Greco-Roman exhibit, the Egyptian exhibit, and a special photographic exhibit on "Oxford at Night." This was the last weekend for the special exhibit, so I am glad that we went. In the evening, we went to an outdoor performance of The Taming of the Shrew, which was performed quite well, with much humour!

Sunday, we slept in and then made our way to the Oxford Botanic Garden. Like the Ashmolean Museum, the Botanic Garden is owned by the University. There was a special summer festival going on, which was nice. We went on a "Secret Garden" literary tour of the grounds, which

resourceress describes in her own entry about this weekend here. The Oxford gardens are the oldest in Britain -- seems like everything here is (a) owned by the University, and (b) the oldest in Britain -- begun in the 17th century, during the reign of Charles I. We saw a yew tree, possibly the oldest specimen at the garden, planted in 1645. Upon leaving the gardens, we took a snack and then hired a punt at the Magdalen Bridge Boathouse. I had never tried my hand at punting before, but I seemed to be okay at it. Certainly much better than some of the other beginners that we saw making their way along the river. We did get lost a bit, wandering off of the River Cherwell and onto the Thames (or, as the stretch in Oxford is called, the River Isis). Whoops... Eventually we found our way back, though, based on a combination of

resourceress's memory, the waterway map, and directions from passer-bys.

Today, both of us have been at work. However, we took a lunch break together to climb the two highest towers in Oxford: Carfax Tower and the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin. And, yes, of course the church (with its tower) is also owned by the University. Other than the lunch break and an interesting astrophysics seminar on the search for extra-solar planets, today has been a pretty standard day. Still no liquid helium...

And that is about all the news that is fit to print. Tune in next time, gentle readers...