One of my goals for this year was to go and visit my best friend Ann in Exeter before she graduated. Sadly, we were both too busy to manage it and the time just flew by this year. Before I knew it, she was prancing across the stage looking fabulous in her gown so I would have to take my trip there some other time. To be honest I've been to Exeter several times, the goal was more about making time to visit Ann this year.
Luckily though another goal was to take a day trip to Oxford which happens to be pretty close to where Ann lives... So I've switched it up a bit and jumped in the car a few weeks ago to go and visit her.
First off getting there was not straight forward as the road into her village was closed. I ended up driving around in circles for about 25 minutes trying to follow the really poorly signed diversion, which kept bringing me out at dead ends because the roads were shut. Eventually I found myself in a village I recognised and figured it out from there, but it was pretty stressful! Don't you just adore living in England with our crap tiny roads and love of shutting important things (like ROADS) on Sundays?
The village Ann lives in is lucky enough to have it's own station so we jumped straight on the train to Oxford. I've always wanted to visit and I've got no idea why I haven't already when it really isn't that far from where I live.
We were also so lucky with the weather and had glorious sunshine for the whole day. The forecast had said it was going to rain so I was totally not dressed for the sun, but isn't that the fun of a day trip to somewhere in Britain, being unprepared for the weather?
So we spent most of our trip just wandering about and looking at all the spires and listening to the bells tolling. When I got home and looked at my phone we had walked nearly 12km! No wonder it felt like we did a fair chunk of walking. Top tip, if you're planning a trip to Oxford, where flat and comfortable shoes. The city is small and flat and every thing is in walking distance so you will do a lot of walking about.
We went to visit Brasenose College which is where one of best friends is at uni. It is quite literally a whole world away from the gross pebbledashed building (that used to be a hostel) next door to the city crematorium that I lived in when I was in halls at uni. Shout out to any Bencraft people who might read this (you know you'd rather be from Bencraft). Our halls may have been rank to look at it but the people in there made up for it <3
For real though, it actually looks like a magical place to live and study with all the amazing old buildings. With the one exception of the Earth Science building which is this horrible new modern construction, that does not jive with the rest of the city in my opinion. Thankfully I'm not clever enough to get into Oxford because imagine being SO DISAPPOINTED when you arrived and then found out your lectures were in the only ugly building in the whole damn city.
For lunch we went to M&S and grabbed some picnic food before heading to Christ Church meadow to sit under a shady tree. We sat here for ages chatting and watching the world go by. If you take a trip here and it's a nice day I would highly recommend doing this. Heck be more organised than us and pack yourself a picnic because the meadow is gorgeous and it's a great spot to really soak up the atmosphere.
We spent most of the afternoon exploring the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. This was rather like visiting an excellent, scaled down version of the Natural History Museum, which I love but there is SO much to see, it's hard to squeeze everything in.
My favorite part was looking at their fossil and mineral collections as it was pretty extensive and they had some really cool exhibits (geology nerd over here). The best part was that it was free as I'm really trying to watch my spending at the moment so it was kind on the wallet too.
It was such a lovely day and so nice to just spend so many hours wandering about with one of my oldest friends and have a chance for a really great catch up.
Oxford, I love you. I'll be coming back! Let me know if you have any tips of places that I should visit or eat at on my next trip there!
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