Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev'rybody's got their heads bowed down
The sun don't shine above the ground
Ain't a-goin' down to Oxford Town - Bob Dylan
Of course ol rollin' Bob was talking about Oxford, Mississippi. Anyway, continuing on our journey we went to see the great University. And see it we did. Yet there is an incident coming up that I will truly be able to say I've been kicked out of Oxford.
The town and school at Oxford are embedded. You have city, wall, college, street, city, wall, college and back and forth.
Most people just refer to this as the round building. It's actually called Radcliffe Camera.It's now just used as a reading room of the Bodleian Library which is next door.
There it is back there on the left.
Ok, So why did we take this photo. Well, we were taken by the name of the little passageway on the right. It's called Logic Lane.
Just after this pic was taken (that's Maya and me in front of the bus) I got thrown out of Oxford. All my life, I kinda figured this was bound to happen. Now if you look through the arch and through the windows in the bus, you might see a figure of a man standing at the left in the archway. He wore a suit and a black bowler hat. I thought I was walking through the archway on the way back to our car. As I approached the archway I stepped to the right to go around the man. He moved right. I kept approaching but changed my course to go to his left. He stepped to the left. Now I was just about on him and I stepped to the right again and so did he and this put our faces right into each others. I looked at him and it was kinda weird on a bunch of levels. For one thing he had a glass eye and it took me a while to connect with him. I said, "Yes?" He said where do you think you're going? I said, "To our car." He said, "No, you aren't." And kicked me out of Oxford. Apparently its some kind of college closed to the public. Wonder what they do in there. British Intelligence trainees? Play-Dough masters? We'll never know.
One more tale to tell about leaving Oxford. The streets were very confusing. Lots of one way lanes going in circles. At one confusing point, Maya just said follow the bus. You would think that was a good idea. After all buses try to efficiently actually go places. Well I followed the bus alrighty. Right into the bus parking depot. The bus drivers didn't take kindly to that and kept moving the buses back and forth to keep me from getting back out. I though we were going to learn yet another meaning of getting "Pounded!"
Anyway, down the road, we finally went. And for all you Shakespeare lovers, this is Stratford On Avon. It is not only the mythical home of Shakespeare, it is the number one tourist trap in England. We putted right on through.
We kept on pressing on Northward. Past Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Blackpool and Lanacster and into the Lake District of northwest England.
We got the idea that there were some folks with a wee bit of quid around these parts. Or maybe this is just where Mr. Rolls Royce lives with all his relatives:
We must have seen dozens of these guys. I think this is a large lake named Windermere:
This is really England. It was so cool to see so much undisturbed land. We've only been living in the USA for a few hundred years and already we've nearly trashed the whole gazillion acres here.
Ok