Oxford – The City of Dreaming Spires

Today we decided to go to Oxford, about an hour (80km) from Paddington on the train – £54.80 return for two. We also booked a walking tour with Oxford Official Walking Tours for £17.00 each. The tour didn’t start until 1.00pm so we retired to a coffee shop on the third floor of a book store (remember those!) to study our map and fill in a bit of time. We walked slightly out of town to the banks of the River Cherwell where they do the punting. It’s is also the location of the Botanic Gardens and a lot of sports grounds belonging to the colleges.

There were 18 in our tour group led by a very nice gentleman named Iain (very easy to remember – he has two eyes). He was in his sixties and a graduate in French of Jesus College. Very articulate, funny and related to and interacted with the group – mainly Americans and Canadians – very well. The tour took two hours and we walked less than a mile, Oxford is very compact. Iain was very knowledgeable and gave us the history of learning at Oxford and explained the system of Colleges and the relationship with Oxford University. However I would only rate the tour five out of ten. Their advertising said we would visit colleges and the entry fees were included in the tour price. In fact we went into only one college, Wadham where entry was free, and then we only visited their fairly ordinary chapel. We didn’t see any of the more notable college quads, chapels, dining halls or libraries. We didn’t even go near the Bridge of Sighs. So for me who was interested in the architecture it was a bit of a let-down. They don’t teach architecture at Oxford, or in fact any useful sciences. There are lots of different tour companies and we should have researched a bit more before going with the one we chose.

The name Oxford comes from the Fording of the River Thames by Oxen. It is a beautiful university city home to the University of Oxford, which was established in the 12^th century and is the oldest in the English speaking world. There are 38 independent colleges and six “dependent” ones. The six are made up of three Roman Catholic, two Anglican and one Baptist college answerable to their church hierarchies. The other thirty eight are completely independent with their own buildings, student accommodation, chapels, banquet halls, finances, traditions, rules, choose their own students, choose and employ there own tutors etc. The University of Oxford is a separate governing body that sets the curriculum and sets and marks the exams each year, also providing the largest libraries and lecture theatres. You can for example study French at any number of the colleges, and live and eat and pray in that college, but at the end you are examined by and get a degree from the University of Oxford, not your college. There is no failure rate as the student/tutor ratio is 1 : 2 or 3 and the tutor knows how you are progressing all the time. Of course competition to get into the colleges is high and the colleges also compete to attract the brightest students. Fees are about £9,500 per annum for UK and European students, £25,000 for others. The Americans thought this was very cheap.

The weather wasn’t the best, warm and often sunny but also frequent heavy showers, so lots of sheltering in doorways – because we didn’t go inside!!!!! Coming back to London the train was packed, standing room only for the hour journey. Overall an interesting day and glad we went.