The rooftops of Oxford

Good morning, lets make a start on the Oxford photo's. There's such a lot of them so I will split them between three posts, don't want to bore the pants off you with one massive long rambling post. I hope you will forgive me if I do not go into a lot of detail about each individual building, truth is that as I went round and round in circles in the city centre, I got a bit confused as to which I had seen and which I hadn't, and they all began to look the same after a while.

My overall impression was that it isn't as big as I thought it was, everywhere is easily reached on foot, and as the main A34 trunk road isn't far away there is often the humming of traffic in the background. I found this quite irritating when I did a walk northwards along the river.

There are nine million bicycles in Oxford, well it seemed like it anyway. Bikes are chained to fences, gates, signs, trees, in fact anywhere, even when there was a sign which said 'bikes chained to these railings will be removed'. Most of them looked like complete wrecks, bent and buckled wheels, wheels missing, battered and scratched, they were dumped anywhere and made the place look so untidy.

The buildings are magnificent, the colleges are spread out through the whole of Oxford. I recognised some of the names from when I was a keen fan of Bamber Gascoigne on University Challenge many years ago. It would have been nice to be able to walk around the grounds of the individual colleges, but there was no public access to snoop around the back. I don't know if it's like that all the time, or because it's the Christmas holidays, but all the gates were locked. Some had closed signs at the entrance, a bit disappointing. The Museum was also closed. There was one open, Christ Church college, but it was £5.50 to go in, I took photo's from the outside.

I went to the Museum of Modern Art in Pembroke Street, thinking I had a treat in store, wrong! Big gallery, all white inside, with a collection of paintings from one artist, mounted sparsley around the walls, didn't do anything for me. Smaller room showing a film about the artist, and a coffee shop. Bit disappointing.

Here we go then, and I don't know what this building is, good start eh, ha ha. Note the bicycle.

I think this is on Cornmarket Street, a lovely old timbered property. Reminded me a bit of York.

A little courtyard off one of the main shopping streets.

Next I climbed the Carfax Tower, on the corner of Queen Street and High Street. On the blurb it said 'Best view of the Dreaming Spires', maybe worth paying the £2.30 and climbing the spiral staircase for some good photo's. One or two good views but I wasn't overly impressed.

Lots of roof tops to look at. I spot a Dreaming Spire amongst the tower cranes :o)

That looks nice over there, should have cropped the roof tops out of the picture.

Looking in a westerly direction you can see the green hills beyond the A34.

I quite like this view looking down High Street, an assortment of interesting buildings.

Back down to earth and this lovely old fashioned wooden post box, outside the main post office.

This is a gate into Christ Church college, St Aldates Road, main entrance down the road. No entry here.

More later. The sun is shining and I'm off out to play.