We're Orf!

It was an exciting moment collecting Maisy from the storage barn, parking her half on the pavement outside of the house and loading it up for our first trip abroad. One weekend away was not really sufficient preparation and if we'd listed all the things we did not understand about the habitation systems, well we'd never have driven off. 

Loading up - the van has a great rear garage.

Gill and Maisy!

We're off,

So far the only items we've definitely remembered that we've forgotten are:
1. The red warning triangle
2. Gill's swimsuit
3. The breathalizer kit required for France

I'm trying to imagine the circumstances that would require you to have all three to hand simultaneously, but I can't. Suggestions on a post card to l'Association de Lac du Vin Nageurs, Paris, France.

We're trundling our way to Oxford at a steady 50mph. It's quite relaxing in the slow lane and the van is very easy to drive due to the automatic clutch. Noisy though, people on Motorhome Facts warned us that rear wheel Ford Transits do sound like a ten ton truck. I guess we'll get used to it.

Gill experimented with the iPhone camera and video. I was going for an imperious expression, but it came out more robotic.

The Oxford campsite is lovely, in trees, and handy for the city, situated right next to the park and ride. Also, sadly next to the railway, so not quiet. We're meeting Matthew for lunch at the Ashmolean later on. Now, I think it's time to poke my head out of the door, rustle up some coffee and see if there is a way through to the Thames tow path as the river looks really close on the map.

Arrangements for the first few days are a bit complicated. We're in Oxford City campsite, but Laura, who was going to the Hyper-Japan Expo in Earls Court needed dropping off at a station near London. So, we dropped Laura at Didcot, making an arrangement to pick her up two days later in Sevenoaks, then all three of us would head for Dover. 

Forty miles in, and I have not crashed yet!

Gill looking cool at the wheel.

The Oxford campsite is great, situated right next to the park and ride. It's a bit run down due to a spat with an adjacent Outdoor Superstore and Oxford City Council over lease arrangements. I do hope it all gets sorted because the location is perfect just off the ring road. It was a nice evening, so we got out the Cadac and cooked up a BBQ.

Next day it was easy just to hop on the nearby bus and head into the city centre which proved to be  unexpectedly packed.  I've been in some crowded places: the queue for the Staten Island ferry just as Manhattan's Financial District heads home; Friday evening on Canary Wharf as the foot soldiers of globalisation pour out onto the concourse and crowds hit the pubs knocking back champagne straight from the bottle: surfing the wave of shoppers crossing the Shibuya interchange one sticky summer's afternoon in Tokyo. I did not expect Broad Street in Oxford to be equally thronged. An interesting mix of twenty-something backpackers, herds of Chinese teenagers sent to Summer language schools being frogmarched about by their Berlitz minders, serenaded by sundry buskers. Maybe it was a field trip and the scholarly group are right now back in the classroom reciting their new words for today: 'spotty adolescent' 'Stratocaster' ' emo' and 'Stairway to Heaven'.

It looks peaceful enough, in fact the streets were heaving..

Since everybody was doing Europe on a shoestring the effect was that outside was packed but the shops empty.  So to get enough peace and quiet to phone Matthew to arrange lunch we hightailed it into the cavernous emptiness of M&S.

We took a quick look around the Ashmolean before lunch, every single object tells a unique, human story: it is difficult not to be simply overwhelmed by the museum's rich, and eclectic collection. By trying to see everything, you understand nothing, so we concentrated on just a few things. My favourites, a 1st century Roman sculpture of a satyr's, so vivid and lively that it could have been carved 1600 years later by Bernini. The artefacts from the African kingdom of Kush, situated near the modern Sudan were a revelation too,  one piece, a rust red earthenware bowl, finely turned with lively scribbled abstract decoration looked as if had been picked up last week at an up-market design fair, in fact it was 3000 years old.

Arranging to meet Matthew at the Ashmolean

In the afternoon we wandered up to the trendy suburb of Jericho, these days artisan bakers and brasseries outnumber pubs, but it's young and lively and if I was a twenty something professional I could see myself wanting to live there.

Discouraging news in Jericho

Cutting across to the river we walked northwards for a couple of miles to an extended riverside pub called The Trout. It was a lovely afternoon so not surprisingly the place was busy. 

The patio of 'The Trout'

A narrow boat near The Trout.

One of the great things about going for a walk with Gill is you always learn something about the natural world that you did not know before. In this case an appreciation of just how magnificent specimen of deciduousness is the Black Alder, how to spot a teasel, and how to make sure you don't confuse a moorhen with a coot. Always useful.

Teasels!

Magnificent specimens by the riverside!

It was early evening by the time we got back to the city centre, there was just time for a coffee before heading to a restaurant.

The Missing Bean coffee shop on Turl Street near Lincoln College claimed to have the best beans in Oxford. I can't vouch for that but it did pass the GMT (Gill macchiato test) with flying colours and that's a pretty rigorous process. The place had an interesting mix of customers: a clutch of couples at the deep and meaningful stage of silent longing; three young women from Eastern Europe swapping stories of love and life in 'how you say' broken English, a young mathematician in the window seat scrawling screeds of equations and an older, balding Indian chap engrossed in editing a seemingly endless, copiously referenced paper, and us, to add a touch of the stalwartly normal to the scene.

The place we ended up eating in strove towards the young and contemporary too. It served up gourmet bangers and mash; very 'now', I mean, even ten years ago would anyone have even dreamed of putting the words artisan and sausage into the same sentence unless writing a dull academic tract on the diet of the Victorian poor in East London. The food was yummy and the service quirky. 

The Big Bang's unreserved reserved sign

No deferential waiting on here, very much transatlantic pallyness with the front of house manager plonking himself down at your table, ipad at the ready, to check your order. Perhaps applying post modern principles of 'challenging received social norms' to the location and signage for the customer toilets may have been a step too far. The visiting Chinese language students would never have got the chance to add 'knobs' and 'knockers' to the colloquial section of  'words learned today';  they might still be wandering the grey painted catacombs below 'The Big Bang' looking for directional signs to the facilities.

Did I like Oxford?  Yes, an interesting place, far more diverse than the phrase 'dreaming spires' might evoke.

Could I live there? Not really, it reveals just how socially conservative I really am. It's not an age thing; at twenty five I think I still would have been mildly discomforted by some aspects of it. 

Throngs are exciting for an hour maybe, then it's quietude I crave.