Oxford; Saturday, 26 February, 2022

I had a quick breakfast in the hotel before heading out across the road to the City Sightseeing tour office to purchase a 48 hour ticket and then wandered down to the nearby stop to pick up the first open-top tour bus of the day. I did a couple of circuits to get a good feel of the city before hopping off at the same stop I’d joined and then going for a wander through the narrow lanes surrounding the universities.

I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the lanes, including taking in one of the few remaining bits of the old medieval wall of the city, as well as popping into the courtyard of the Bodleian library to have a look round there before heading towards the centre of town to grab a quick lunch.

With lunch in my stomach I walked down to Carfax, the very centre of the city and home to the Carfax Tower. This was once the tower of St Michaels Church, but the rest of the church building has gone, leaving just the tower standing. There is a local law that states that no buildings in the centre of the city can be taller than the Carfax Tower, so it means from the roof on the top of the tower there are excellent views across the whole of the city.

So I climbed the 99 steps, which included a pretty narrow winding set of metal spiral stairs that were more pleasant to walk up than to walk back down, up to the roof and I wasn’t disappointed. From up here you can fully take in the city of dreaming spires and it’s easy to pick out key sights such as the castle, university church and the Radcliffe Camera.

After taking in the views from the top of the tower I climbed back down and wandered the short distance to the hop-on-hop-off bus stop to catch the bus a couple of stops round to the University Museums. Here two of the universities main museums – the Natural History and Pitt-Rivers Museums are in the same complex.

I spent quite a long time looking round the two museums, partly as there was quite a lot to see, but also partly because they were so busy it was actually difficult to get near to any of the exhibits. The Covid-19 rules in England had been pretty much all scrapped just a couple of days beforehand and consequently museums, especially free museums, were operating at full capacity.

Having eventually seen as much of the museums as I was going to see I headed back to the bus stop and caught the last bus of the day back round to the stop near my hotel and then walked back there to freshen up before heading out a little later to grab some dinner.

After a brief evening wander I headed back to the hotel for a well deserved sleep.