Our first stop of the morning was the Bodleian Library to sign up for a tour. We got on the list for the 10:30 tour and then went over to the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin to climb the tower.
It is a lovely church.
On the way up we got close-up views of some of the carvings.
And then the spires of Oxford spread out around us from the top. Matthew Arnold's line is often quoted for good reason, "“And that city with her dreaming spires, she needs not June for beauty’s heightening”. (Arnold wrote the poem "Thyrsis" in 1865 in honor of a friend who had died young.)
Alex took quite a few photos here too, no surprise. Find his photos on Flickr and a short blog post about our visit to Oxford here.
The space for people to walk at the top of the tower went around all four sides, but it was narrow and people had to go both ways to get back to the stairs, so there was a certain amount of back and forth negotiating who would walk where. I assume they have a limit on the number of people up there at any given time. It is well worth the climb and the small fee.
In the mass of stone buildings, my eyes kept coming back to these brightly painted ones across the High Street from the church.
Me up on the top of the church.
Many of the colleges have sundials we could see from the tower. Pereunt et imputantur, the motto under this one, means "The hours are consumed and will be charged to our account." (and yes, I had to look that one up!)
The Radcliffe Camera.
We asked one of the other tourists to take a photo of both of us together.
We came back down and went right to the library for our tour. We had been in the Divinity School building when we were here with the kids last time, since it is the Infirmary in the Harry Potter movies.
Beautiful views out the windows. Once we went upstairs to Duke Humfrey's Library we could not take photos. It was fantastic to see it, and the bits of the collection that are there. They are having the same book storage problems as all big depository libraries, and they are building a giant storage space in Swindon to hold most of the books.
The construction in the square of the library. Doesn't it look like the statue has a bath towel on?
Once again I found myself drawn to places that are important in Gaudy Night. This is where the final scene takes place.
We walked around for the rest of the afternoon, having lunch at a place that claims to be the oldest coffee house in England, which is across the street from a place that makes the same claim.
Alex with a classic history of science moment, Boyle and Hooke.
We walked down to Magdalen Bridge to "send our love to London" (also a Sayers phrase).
At the end of the day we had coffee at Blackwells, and I bought another book (because I really need more books) and then we went back to the EuroPub to get our suitcase and catch the coach back to Cambridge. No trouble with any of that, although it confirmed for me that the train is just a better way to travel.
Next time.
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