Back in Oxford again

Blackwell Bookshop

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Attraction | "A Cathedral of Knowledge"

Blackwell's - got to love it Photo - Blackwell Bookshop, Oxford, England

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My uncle and aunt from Australia came to visit family in the UK for a month and my husband and I got 'custody' for several days before being asked to take them back to my parents. My uncle is a strange chap who has been proclaiming the end of the world (in economic terms rather than religious Armageddon) for the past few decades. In his home in Sydney he has a spectacular library room in which he keeps all his economics books and he arrived in the UK with what he described as 'a few feet still to fill'. My poor aunt has been married to him for 50 years and you would think she's had time to get used to him by now. Oxford marked the half-way point on our journey delivering them from relative...Read More

My uncle and aunt from Australia came to visit family in the UK for a month and my husband and I got 'custody' for several days before being asked to take them back to my parents. My uncle is a strange chap who has been proclaiming the end of the world (in economic terms rather than religious Armageddon) for the past few decades. In his home in Sydney he has a spectacular library room in which he keeps all his economics books and he arrived in the UK with what he described as 'a few feet still to fill'. My poor aunt has been married to him for 50 years and you would think she's had time to get used to him by now.

Oxford marked the half-way point on our journey delivering them from relatives in Bedford back to my parents in Salisbury. I knew Uncle Tony would rail against the academic privilege of the city – that's partly why I took him. But I also knew that I had a special treat tucked up my sleeve which would absolutely blow his mind. That treat was the main Broad Street building of Blackwell's bookshop and it's underground 'bunker' of books.

I was a student at a college just over the road from Blackwell's for four years and I love this place. Admittedly most of my books were either from their second hand section or were begged, stolen or borrowed from older students. Nonetheless, Blackwell's has had my heart from the day I first found it. From it's origins in Oxford, Blackwell's has expanded out around the city with satellite branches such as the Art and Poster shop on the corner or Broad Street and Turl Street, the Blackwell Music shop and Blackwell Rare Books shop, both also on Broad Street. Expansion continued beyond Oxford and there are now a total of 50 Blackwell stores but none can compare to the original shop where it all started.

From the outside it's hard to imagine what's hidden beyond the shop's historic façade which looks like it might have a sweet shop or a gentlemen's outfitters full of old chaps with tape measures hanging round their necks. What it has instead is a book lover's paradise laid out over several floors and most impressively in the basement. I took my uncle straight to the Norrington Room, the super-bunker of knowledge which is several times larger than the rest of the shop. If someone dropped a bomb on Oxford and the Norrington Room survived, we could probably build a new society from the knowledge in the double-storey basement room.

The ground floor is home to most fiction and popular writing as well as the children's section. You'll also find cookbooks near the entrance and fiction organised by genre. Up the stairs you'll come to a section which houses a large and busy coffee shop. I can't tell you too much about the subjects covered on the upper floors except that the second hand books are on the top floor along with the customer toilets. As I dragged myself up three flights of stairs I wondered if their location was designed to stop tourists dropping by for a pee and then leaving again.

I'm strictly a ground floor and Norrington Room girl – broadly fiction on the ground floor and non-fiction and academic in the basement. I most often use the basement for travel books since it's impossible to choose a good travel guide without having a flick through the pages, having a chance to check how heavy it is, or to see whether the pictures are inspiring. I also linger in the world writing, checking out all the books about the countries which fascinate me.

I am not just a book lover, I'm a very mean book lover so a trip to Blackwell's means I take a notebook and a pen and I stroll around writing down the names of all the books that take my fancy so I can go away and hunt them down cheaper on-line or swap them on book swapping sites. People like me are awful and are probably contributing to the destruction of fine bookstores like Blackwell's but the place is just SO tempting that I can't buy everything I want and I need to pace it out over the next few months. Part of the joy of reading is hunting down the books – buying books in Blackwell's would be like going to a zoo to shoot the animals. At the end of the day you've got a pile of books (or dead animals) but where's the fun if they're just standing there waiting for you?
After the allotted hour for browsing was over, I was due to meet my uncle at the entrance where my husband and aunt would join us. They'd been off for a lightning tour of the Ashmolean museum whilst uncle went book hunting. Aunt had given him £100 of pocket money and he returned with no books. I thought this odd until we learned he hadn't bought them because he needed more money. They both disappeared back to the basement to get the books.

In all honesty I think I could have left my uncle in Blackwell's for a month and he wouldn't have got bored. I very rarely go in bookshops these days because most just have the same old stock and I'm rarely surprised. Blackwell's is different. You can't go in and not come out with a pile of books in a bag or a long list to take away and add to your wish list. It's like a cathedral to learning – a place of hushed silence and awe-struck worshippers shuffling through the books looking for knowledge, inspiration or answers. It's about as far from a High Street book shop as you will ever find. Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on July 31, 2011

Blackwell Bookshop
48-51 Broad Street
Oxford OX1 3BQ
+44 1865 792792

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Kings Arms

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Restaurant | "Not Quite Food Fit for Kings"

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The Kings Arms is a place from my student days which I recall with a high degree of fondness but very little clarity. Such is the way we remember our old drinking dens perhaps. As the second closest pub to my Oxford college, it was somewhere I inevitably ended up on more evenings than I care to recall. I don't think I've been in there in the last 20 years.My aunt and uncle from Australia have been over for a few weeks and Oxford was a convenient place for us to break our journey between relatives in Bedford and my parents in Salisbury. I thought it would be a good place to stop off and show them around. Uncle Tony has a massive educational chip on his shoulder so I thought it might be fun ...Read More

The Kings Arms is a place from my student days which I recall with a high degree of fondness but very little clarity. Such is the way we remember our old drinking dens perhaps. As the second closest pub to my Oxford college, it was somewhere I inevitably ended up on more evenings than I care to recall. I don't think I've been in there in the last 20 years.

My aunt and uncle from Australia have been over for a few weeks and Oxford was a convenient place for us to break our journey between relatives in Bedford and my parents in Salisbury. I thought it would be a good place to stop off and show them around. Uncle Tony has a massive educational chip on his shoulder so I thought it might be fun to rub him up the wrong way with the home country's oldest place of learning. He's also an obsessive collector of economics books so I could get back into his good books with a trip to Blackwell's bookshop. But first we needed to eat and I thought the Kings Arms would do the job.

If you're familiar with Oxford, the Kings Arms is at the end of Broad Street, on the corner of Parks Road and Hollywell Street. If you don't 'do' street names but you know some of the sites, it's very close to the Sheldonian Theatre, The Bodleian Library and the Exam Schools. There are tables outside on the pavement but the weather wasn't great so we headed inside but not until my husband had told me off (once again) for trying to get friendly with a Doberman that was tied up outside. I'm rubbish at identifying allegedly dangerous dog breeds and will no doubt get savaged one of these days.

We arrived about two o'clock in the afternoon which was an accidentally wise move since there were plenty of tables inside. We grabbed one in a quiet corner close to the counter where you order food. If there had been more space, I would have gone for a table in the room at the front of the pub which has large windows overlooking the street outside, which would have been a lot prettier than where we were.

The Kings Arms – or the KA as it's always been known – is quite a nice looking pub inside. The floors are stripped wood, the ceilings are high, the windows large and it's rather traditional looking. The tables are bare wood and the walls are decorated with lots of photos of college societies and old shots of Oxford.

I left my husband to coordinate drinks and food whilst I I popped downstairs to the toilets where I was instantly reminded why I'd not been in there for over 20 years. Don't choose this pub if you can't handle steep stairs – or if you have a normal sense of smell.

The food in the KA isn't cheap for rather ordinary pub food. My husband and I both ordered scampi and chips. I didn't have too much choice since I don't eat meat and there were only three things on suitable on the menu board on the wall. My aunt ordered one of the other - the fish pie - and my uncle had some kind of meat pie with chips.

Food arrived in about 20 minutes. I was a little put off by passing one of the kitchen staff in the corridor spouting some comment about 'More f***ing food' which perhaps displayed a rather less than enthusiastic attitude to both his job and the food.

First the positive news. My uncle's pie was a stunning looking dish with the flaky pastry puffed up to mountainous proportions. Unfortunately the other dishes were disappointing. My aunt's fish pie was almost white in colour which just seemed wrong. I know fish pie always has mashed potato on the top but normally it's at least a little bit browned off. This just looked like someone had dolloped a mound of mash on top of the sauce without putting it into the oven or browning it under the grill. It was served with some unexciting looking vegetables. For our scampi and chips the portions were rather mean in size given that they were £9 each. As we were having lunch I didn't really want or need more but felt the dish wasn't particularly good value. The chips were crisp and not greasy but the wholetail scampi were very 'from the freezer centre' in style.

The scampi was served with tartare sauce but the waitress checked if we wanted alternative sauces and we asked for ketchup for the scampi and mustard for the meat pie. The food was entirely edible but sadly just not very exciting. The four meals cost just under £40 with drinks on top.

As we prepared to leave my uncle stopped to read the notices on the large notice board just inside the door. Nowhere else in the world, he claimed, could a pub have a notice board like this one, he claimed. Instead of cards selling second hand cars or advertising the darts or pool leagues, this was covered in adverts for theatre events and classical music concerts. I think it was one of the few things that impressed my uncle about the place. Read Less

Member Rating 3 out of 5 on July 23, 2011

Kings Arms
Hollywell Street
Oxford, England

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Oxford Park and Ride - Really Worth Using

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I go often to Oxford; I guess in the last six months I've probably been there three times. I use it as a place to meet up with friends who'd rather make the journey there than travel a little further to see us at home in Northamptonshire. Mind you, our local towns have little to offer compared to Oxford so I don't blame them at all.Oxford is a fabulous city and one where I lived for four years as a student. But there's one thing that you really don't want to try to do and that's to park in the city centre. The car parks are ridiculously expensive with prices that really will make your eyes water. If you have the patience of a saint and are willing to walk a long way, you might be lucky eno...Read More

I go often to Oxford; I guess in the last six months I've probably been there three times. I use it as a place to meet up with friends who'd rather make the journey there than travel a little further to see us at home in Northamptonshire. Mind you, our local towns have little to offer compared to Oxford so I don't blame them at all.

Oxford is a fabulous city and one where I lived for four years as a student. But there's one thing that you really don't want to try to do and that's to park in the city centre. The car parks are ridiculously expensive with prices that really will make your eyes water. If you have the patience of a saint and are willing to walk a long way, you might be lucky enough to find some free on-road parking but don't count on it. Most of the city has residents only parking or double yellow lines. It's a nightmare. Hotels in the centre charge shocking rates and so I strongly recommend to use the Park and Ride system.

No matter what direction you approach Oxford from there will be signs for the Park and Ride car parks. To the north of the city you'll find Water Eaton and Pear Tree car parks which are easily accessed from the M40 at Junction 9. To the east of the city is the Thornhill car park, to the south is Redbridge and to the west is Seacourt. I've used all except Redbridge and Seacourt.

The system is simple and good value – especially if you are travelling alone. I most often use Peartree but the system is the same at all of the car parks. You arrive, park up and head to the bus stop. Buy a ticket – a return if you are coming back the same day, a single if you'll be longer – and then get on the bus. An adult return in April 2011 is £2.20 off peak (this includes weekends, bank holidays and after 9 am during the week) or £2.50 peak. If you are travelling as a couple, there's a slight discount and two off peak will cost you £4 – but remember you do have to travel together. A single costs £1.60 and weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual tickets are also available. You pay nothing to park your car.

I often go to events at my old college which require me to stay overnight. I used to be very nervous about leaving my car at Pear Tree until the driver of one of the buses told me that crime is now very rare at the car parks. I had previously heard about cars being stolen or damaged at the Thornhill site because it was the closest to London and gangs would come out from the city but that seems to have now been stamped out. Peartree, Redbridge and Seacourt accept cars for up to 24 hours with the other two allowing you to stay for up to 3 days.

From Pear Tree it takes about 10 to 15 minutes to get into central Oxford. Most of the other sites have a similar journey time. The frequency of the buses varies during the day from as little as 8-10 minutes between departures at peak time and as long as 30 minutes during the evenings. The buses are all quite new, invariably clean and tidy and if you're excited by double deckers, you'll be glad to know that all the fleet are of this type. If you are one of the first to get on, head upstairs and grab the front seats for the best views.

I always enjoy the journey in from Pear Tree as it passes along the Woodstock Road where I lived for a year and I like to check out my old stamping ground. The bus deposits passengers on George Street close to the theatre and picks up from St Giles, just outside the Odeon Cinema, opposite the Martyrs Memorial.

I strongly recommend that if you want to visit Oxford you use the Park and Ride service. The only exception to this recommendation would be if you are registered disabled and can park for free in the car parks. Even in that case you'll be at the mercy of the availability of spaces. Good luck and enjoy your visit. Read Less

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University of Oxford Botanic Garden

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Attraction | "Oxford's best gardens"

Cotton Plants Photo - University of Oxford Botanic Garden, Oxford, England

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Looking back on my student days it seemed like the weather was always sunny, the jokes were always funny, the food tasted better (which is definitely not true) and the British obsession with gardening meant that Oxford was always filled with perfect lawns and beautiful flower beds. Was this last thing any more true than the others? Of course not, but it's undeniable that the city takes great care to always put it's best floral face forward. Nowhere can you find a better example of that than in the Oxford University Botanical Gardens. Like many of the city's attractions, most people never actually go there as students. I was however a slight exception to this rule and I did go several times...Read More

Looking back on my student days it seemed like the weather was always sunny, the jokes were always funny, the food tasted better (which is definitely not true) and the British obsession with gardening meant that Oxford was always filled with perfect lawns and beautiful flower beds. Was this last thing any more true than the others? Of course not, but it's undeniable that the city takes great care to always put it's best floral face forward. Nowhere can you find a better example of that than in the Oxford University Botanical Gardens.

Like many of the city's attractions, most people never actually go there as students. I was however a slight exception to this rule and I did go several times. It might have had something to do with having a massive crush on someone who lived in the accommodation building adjacent to the gardens but then again, perhaps I had a prematurely middle-aged interest in gardening long before I should have. When I met up with my friend and her son to spend an afternoon in the city I was warned that they'd already had a full week of museums and that it would be wise not to try to force any more on them. So I proposed the Botanical Gardens and they – very politely – agree to go along with that proposal.

The first nice surprise was discovering that the entrance fee was less than I'd feared, especially as my friend's son got in for fee by qualifying as a student (albeit not a local one). I got a reduced fee as an ex-student despite having no ID to prove it but then no such common ID exists. I paid £3 and Squidge got in for £3.80.

I was a bit worried that the gardens might be a bit 'thin' so early in the year but the recent bout of exceptionally warm sunny weather had put paid to any fears. The botanical gardens were looking fantastic. We started out by checking the conservatory which is full of citrus plants including some big ugly yellow things that neither of us could identify. Next stop was in the greenhouses that line the edge of the river Cherwell where we sweated it out to see some lovely exhibits. The path is overgrown with vegetation and it's easy to convince yourself you could be in the jungle though a neatly labelled jungle for sure. The first highlight was a pond with water lilies which fills a large greenhouse. It's a bit too early in the year to get the best of water lilies but it was still fun to watch the tiny fish swimming in and out of the stems. Around the edge of the greenhouse were lots of beautiful bromeliads and even cotton plants. Tropical plants about in the greenhouses although my photographs were a bit limited by fear of fogging up my camera. Beautiful ferns and lush greenery fill the greenhouses with life and sweaty intensity.

Out of the greenhouses we found dozens of beds stuffed to bursting with spring flowers with tulips dominating the view. In a wide range of colours, forms and sizes the displays were fantastic. Allium lilies burst into globes of purple flowers and little blue forget-me-nots filled in the spaces between. Walking to the furthest point of the gardens we found a small lake with an island in the middle where pricly guneras were already standing waist high. The water itself was green and full of blanket weed which seems to be a bit problem this year due to the early warmth.

From the end of the gardens you can look back across the entire space and see the tower of Magdalen College beyond. This is the tower where the famous May Morning singing takes place. With just a few more days left in April, the choristers will already be preparing for the biggest day of their year.

This is not the best time to see the gardens. They will be more impressive in a month or two when the bare beds have been filled with colour and life. But for an April display they were already looking very good. Families picnicked on the grass and played games. A small boy collected all the pine cones into a big pile and counted them with his father whilst young lovers entwined on the grass.

The gardens have a small shop at the entrance but it sells very little. There's a small gallery showing paintings or photographs for with entrance is free of charge but it will only take a few minutes to see it. There are no catering facilities – the classic attraction of teashop tourism is not played out in this centre of academic botany and study. Also be aware there are only two toilets for each sex and they are well hidden. As always happens the ladies' has a long queue and the facilities are not sign-posted or shown on the free map that you receive. Just for reference, when you leave the payment booth and the shop, turn left towards the river and left again past the conservatory and they are hidden out of sight.

There are more impressive gardens in the UK but if you find yourself in Oxford this is the best there is to visit and it offers a quiet place for contemplation, picnics and sunbathing. I recommend it highly as somewhere you can see great displays. Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on April 25, 2011

University of Oxford Botanic Garden
High Street
Oxford, England OX1 4AX
+44 1865 276920

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Head of the River

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Restaurant | "The Head on a Hot Afternoon"

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The Head of the River (THOTR) has long been a popular Oxford city centre pub although it's not always one that the tourists find since you'll need to head quite a way down St Aldates, past Christ Church and past the less scenic Police Station and Courts (good for Morse fans) before you reach Folly Bridge and the pub. For those not in the know, the pub takes its name from the winning position in the rowing regattas that take place on the stretch of river just outside the pub. The top position at the end of the competition is team that takes the honours as 'Head of the River'. It's not – as I thought for a long time – due to being the end of the racing stretch.I met up with a friend and her ...Read More

The Head of the River (THOTR) has long been a popular Oxford city centre pub although it's not always one that the tourists find since you'll need to head quite a way down St Aldates, past Christ Church and past the less scenic Police Station and Courts (good for Morse fans) before you reach Folly Bridge and the pub. For those not in the know, the pub takes its name from the winning position in the rowing regattas that take place on the stretch of river just outside the pub. The top position at the end of the competition is team that takes the honours as 'Head of the River'. It's not – as I thought for a long time – due to being the end of the racing stretch.

I met up with a friend and her son to go for lunch and since the son had never been to Oxford before I thought they'd probably like to be by the river and the Head of the River was the pub which immediately came to mind. The weather has been unseasonably warm and we weren't surprised to find that all the outdoor tables had already been filled. Not surprised and if truth be told, quite glad since neither of us was really ready for quite so much sun quite so early in the year. We managed to find a table for three not far from the windows which open onto the river and we benefited from the cool breeze but not from the very crowded arrangement of the furniture which meant every time we wanted to get away from the table we had to perform acrobatics to get away.

THOTR is not a cheap pub and you will pay dearly for the advantage of its position. I hadn't been in the pub for about 25 years so naturally it seems a lot more expensive than I remembered. We picked up the menus from the bar, ordered some drinks and went to consider our choices. Luckily with my friend being French, she was happy to have a 'proper' lunch rather than just a sandwich although perhaps if we'd known how big the food was we'd have thought twice. She translated the menu for her son who leaped on the option of steak and fries with the benefit of not having seen that it cost a whopping £18.50 which I considered pretty over the top for lunch. She chose scampi and chips and I opted for a vegetarian burger of mushrooms and goat cheese. We placed our orders at the bar and sat back to drink and wait.

The inside of the pub is rather traditional – wooden floors, lots of old furniture – but not too cheesy (which in my book means not too much tat hanging all over the place – seriously, some UK pubs look like someone decided to hang all their rubbish off the ceiling and the walls). The ceilings are high, there's a nice fireplace, though obviously not lit on a 28C Saturday afternoon but the main attraction will always be the river. The jetty for renting boats or taking motor cruisers up the river is located just outside the pub.

Our food arrived and everything was enormous. Given the costs – in my case about £9 for a burger – it did need to be something more than a small dish. Adam's steak was enormous, Squidge's scampi were big juicy ones and my 'burger' was so big I wasn't sure whether to eat it or climb in. The steak was served with lots of chips, a mound of mushrooms (which we go to steal because he didn't like them) and roasted cherry tomatoes. I had one of the scampi and can confirm they were not the cheap nasty ones you usually get in pub meals. The 'burger' (I keep putting in inverted commas because it wasn't a burger at all) consisted of a split bun with a layer of tomato relish under a layer of melted cheese with two enormous Portabello mushrooms perched on top with a dollop of spinach and then an enormous thick slice of goat cheese. It was so high they didn't even attempt to put the 'lid' of the burger onto it. The chips were all thick ones that looked as if they'd been coated in something but whatever it was didn't actually taste of anything. The waitress brought us mustard (unfortunately not English), ketchup and tartar sauce.

My burger was much too big and I felt a total pig for getting through it all. The goat cheese was delicious, the mushrooms were smoky and tasty and there was nothing discordant about the dish but it just suffered from being a bit too complicated. Without the spinach or without the melted cheese at the bottom it would have been a lot more manageable. Half way through our Everest-like challenge of eating all the food I wanted to go and buy us some more drinks but could see there was no way I'd have got them before the food got completely cold because the line was just too long. I waited a little longer and went back for a couple of half pints of beer and we used them to wash down the mountain of food.

It was nice to go back to a place that I'd long forgotten and though the food was not cheap, the value was good for the amount served. My only gripe was the cramming together of so many tables and the slow service at the bar but I'd go back again next time I'm in the city which probably won't be long – but maybe I'll avoid a really hot afternoon. Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on April 25, 2011

Head of the River
Folly Bridge
Oxford, England OX1 4LB
+44 (1865) 721600

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