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Our first short break was four days in Oxford. We visited the city last year and spent two days exploring the sights but realised there was lots more to see and decided to return.
This time we came by train and stayed right in the centre in the Randolph Hotel which I always assumed was named after the local big wig, Randolph Churchill but I was wrong. It was named after Dr Francis Randolph, an eighteenth century benefactor who had given £1,000 to the University, he died 100 years before the hotel was built so clearly he made a good impression.
Being out of season the hotel were discounting their rates which is why we could afford to stay there although we declined the opportunity to pay £26 each for breakfast. In fairness to the hotel it was very good, sometimes when you pay a lot it is a let down, in fact our previous stay in Oxfordshire was a great disappointment, a hotel which was big on bullshit but low on service.
The biggest plus is that the hotel is right in the centre of town and opposite the Ashmolean museum which was the main focus of our stay. On our last visit we spent a morning in the museum and realised we had not scratched the surface, the museum is huge but very well laid out so you want to give each gallery the attention it deserves.
Of course there is the silly woke nonsense like the warning above, the offending item was a statue of a slave with a chain round her arms. The statue was used by the slave abolitionists to highlight cruelty but does it really need a trigger warning? Having read the notice you then tend to go searching for the offending display.
The other museum we had another go at was the Pitt Rivers, pictured opposite.
On our last visit we were overwhelmed by the shear scale of the place, a huge hall full of cabinets each of which is jam packed with artefacts whose labels have been typed on a very old typewriter so many years ago that the paper has turned yellow. One or two labels are new, they replace those which have upset the politically correct police and have therefore been updated.
We also managed to get in to see the Bodleian Library on this visit, being out of season the tours are not full, it is a wonderful interior but as most of the manuscripts are available on-line it too is becoming a museum rather than work space. After two days of intense museum visiting we took advantage of a gloriously sunny day and walked along the Oxford Canal to a very nice pub called The Trout for lunch and then walked back along the River Thames.
The picture below was painted on a canal bridge as part of a project to discourage graffiti, a Spitfire attacking a dinosaur next to a canal, I am not sure that it is historically accurate but good fun.
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