Now, the day before I left for Amsterdam, Shaun decided that there was no point in going into campus (no one shows up on Fridays it seems) and that we should go to Oxford instead. He tried hard to sell it as a “Brideshead Revisited” sort of thing, which became the running joke of the day. (He decided that I was Charles Ryder and he was Lord Sebastian Flyte.) So it was that we set out at the crack of noon and hopped a train for Oxford. Now, this was not particularly planned and we’d done no research, but Shaun was confident that he’d be able to find his way around because he’d spent part of a day there a few decades ago. (It was the day he went to be interviewed for admission into their PhD program. He got in, but went to Cambridge instead.)

Upon arrival, we wandered past the modern Saud Business School towards the historic town centre. First stop: Tourist Info. Now, I don’t think I saw a single tour bus the whole time we were there, but the tourist industry thereabout is certainly industrial strength. They offered many alternative packagings of Oxford souvenirs. Want Harry Potter (they filmed many of the interiors here)? They’ve got stuffed owls, souvenir wooden wands and a talking (literally) hat. Want Downton Abbey? They have guides to where it was filmed, season by season. Which murder mystery series do you want? Inspector Morse? Endevour? Misomer Murders? They’ve got them all. We settled for a 50p street map and headed off to see the colleges.

Balliol College (above) was the first stop.  2 GBP for visitors to walk inside, collected by the porters, who function as gatekeepers. The place was pretty historic-looking, right down to the chapel that smelled of wood and students.

But I wasn’t ready for the Mulberry Tree. Now, I should say that the gardens were pretty much immaculate (and we saw a gardener on his hands and knees working as we walked past) so this tree seemed out of place.

As you can see, it looks like its on its last legs (limbs?), having clearly pretty much collapsed under its own weight eons ago, but somehow not quite died. So, the story goes, this mulberry tree is historic because …. well … someone did something famous next to it or something. The point is, it is cherished and nutured and, despite appearances, it produces a substantial quantity of ….uh….mulberries every year. Which they make into jam. And every student in Balliol gets a few jars.  And they give it to their mums, because  students don’t eat mulberry jam these days. Or so I’m told….

Of course, not everything is historic. Just across from the Mulberry Tree was the dining hall (ungoing extensive renovations, perhaps to bring hygiene up to 19th century standards) with a very modern-looking dorm growing out the side of it. And what’s that in the window of the top floor of the dorm? Pac-man!

But we weren’t done with history, not by a long shot! Next stop was the Bodleian Library, home of ….books…really old books. And historic bricks. (Pretty nice looking-ones too.) The interior courtyard was perhaps the noisiest university building we visited, probably due to all the tourists taking pictures, chatting, and happily ignoring the dozens of “Silence, Please!” signs librarians had plastered everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. Here’s a spot they missed.

After a tour of the Gift shop (where I bought something irresistable for Clare), we headed to a church (University Church of St. Mary the Virgin?) to check out the tea room (too full) and climb the stairs to the tower (5 GBP) for the view. It was worth it.

Next stop was All Souls College (2 GBP admission, visitors only from 2-4 pm.) According to Lord Sebastian, this is the most exclusive college at Oxford. The chapel looked suitable for a coronation and seemed to smell of money. But, seriously, it was one of the most impressive chapels I’ve seen….period.

At that point, we badly needed refreshment, so we skipped across the high street to the local tea rooms, only to find The Grand Cafe, which claimed to be the oldest coffee house in England.

By this point, dusk was not far off, but we needed a break, so we strolled through the botanical gardens (I think inspector morse investigated a murder here….Shaun claimed that the head gardener had done it.) and strolled along the river.

Now, real estate here abouts costs the earth (okay, a terrible metaphor) and its old and space is scarce so what does Christ Church College do? They use their spare land for pasture and graze heirloom long-horned Angus cattle on it. But this meant that as dusk was falling, we walked back to the colleges across the empty fields.

And that’s where we ended our tour, with dusk falling around the light of a Christmas tree in their courtyard.