Oxford and the Cotswolds!

 Today I went with Katie on a walking tour of Oxford and the Cotswolds!  The word "Cotswolds" comes from "Cot" meaning animal/sheep pen and "wold" meaning hills, so hills of sheep, which is essentially what that area was!!  It's an area of towns that are filled with cute cottages that used to be for the poorer people who all lived off of area farms, but now these cottages are priviledged commodities.  Our tour guide said that he was talking to a real estate agent who said that 10 years ago or so, one of these could have gone for 7,000 pounds.  Recently one just sold for 700,000! Talk about inflation!  The town we wandered around first is Minster Lovell, where all the cottages have names, not numbers.

The town features thatched rooves as well as a special slate type that I don't recall the name of...but every house is required to keep the kind of roof that was there from the beginning, even though you have to redo the thatching every decade or so.  Upkeep at its finest! 


In the town there is one church and a lovely graveyard, and through the graveyard are llamas!!! The white llama was very friendly and came up to say hello to us.  As a big fan of "The Emperor's New Groove" I was very excited by this. 

There are also ruins in the town of the Coke family's home which has a tragic story:  The Coke family had a daughter and on the night of her wedding she wanted to play hide and seek.  The groom and friends went to seek her and searched and searched the whole house and couldn't find her anywhere.  After a week they gave up and left town.  Months later the family came back because they were going to sell the house, and a servant went up to the attic to clear out the old trunks.  In one old trunk that was lined with lead, she found the dead remains of the bride daughter, who had climbed in there and been shut in with no way to get out and no one could hear her through the lead.

On a lighter note, there is a stream by the house as well as a pond.  Being a country home, visitors would often come, unexpected, for days at a time.  The family was Catholic and due to frequent feast days had to eat fish often, so they would fish in the stream and put as many as possible in the fish pond to keep for days when company was in excess and many fish were needed.  Smart, huh?  Speaking of being Catholic, the house was partially destroyed when Henry the VIII came to the throne because they supported the Catholic side. Uh ohhhhh.  That happened a lot, for the record.  Henry destroyed a huge amount of property because it was either Catholic in design/origin/belonging to a Catholic family.

We left Minster Lovell and headed to the neighboring town of Burford for lunch and wandering around its "downtown" full of cute -albeit expensive- shops.  My favorite was The Madhatter Bookshop, which sold hats AND books.  Really, can a store get any better?? The hats inside were fabulous, like the ones at the royal wedding.  I wish I had a reason to buy one, but I just couldn't justify a 50-60 pound hat for one possible tea party.  They were gorgeous art pieces though. 

After lunch we were back in the coach and off to Oxford!  Oxford gets its name from being originally a river town where oxen had to ford the river for trade to be possible. (Which obviously makes me just think of Oregon Trail..."All your oxen have died. You did not ford the river." But that's neither here nor there.)   University of Oxford is made up of many, many colleges.  One has to apply to both an individual college AND the university, as well as take exams for both. Oof! Glad I don't go there, I have to say.

 This particular building is a Christopher Wren building, who also designed the dome of St. Paul's.  Oxford is built out of a limestone which actually gives a cozier yellow tone than the gray I had always imagined it to be.  The buildings range from 1600s-1800s designs, I believe, and are just absolutely breathtaking.  The individuals colleges are built around little greens.  Item: Oxford milks its status to get money out of tourists.  To get into these individual greens is like, 3 pounds each.  We had a whole ticket deal so I didn't pay directly, but we only got into two. 

 Some scenes in Harry Potter were filmed at Oxford, including the Great Hall which is Christ's Church and the library, but these have become SUPER tourist attactions and are even pricier and crowded, so we didn't see those.  The library was also just closed for an event. Lame.  Interesting fact: Oxford's books are actually all underground, miles and miles of shelves.  The library buildings themselves are all study/reading rooms now, like this one to the right, which was the first round library, but now is relatively bookless! Still gorgeous, though. Also, you aren't allowed to walk on the grass.  That's very important. I've never seen such beautiful edging in my life.

The streets around Oxford have great names, my favorites being Magpie and this one, Logic Lane.  Come on Oxford, just keep on milking it.

This is Oxford's version of Venice's Bridge of Sighs.

This is the green of Jesus College. Yes, actually.  They have no qualms about it. Anyway, beautiful, right?? And most excitingly, there's a MAGNOLIA TREE IN THE CORNER!!!! They have magnolias in England!!! I knew I liked this country. To that point, on the train ride and coach ride around, I was noting that the English countryside is rather like Virginia.  My favorite state prepared me well. :)

We got into the great dining room in Jesus College.  For special occasions the students eat in there, in full regalia which is black suit and white tie and academic robes.  When you enter, you stand behind the chair of your choosing, and only when the priviledged tutors and such choose theirs on the upper table seating and after grace is said can you sit.  Each school has its own individual grace, said in Latin.  Our tour guide actually ate at one of these dinners, and said it was wonderful and the hangover the next day was well worth it. Oh the English and their Port!

After Jesus we went into Exeter College to see the chapel.  Exeter is where J.R.R. Tolkien went, so I was bug eyed the entire time, just thinking he had sat there, stood there, breathed there. I think you can see some Minas Tirith and even Rivendell inspiration in this architecture, don't you? :) 

Inside the chapel was the most gorgeous organ I had ever seen, painted and carved, and the stained glass windows were fabulous too.  Apparently this chapel is Victorian, especially reflected in the window art which doesn't really focus on Jesus, which apparently was a fad in Victorian architecture.

They have this lovely bust of good ole' JRR right outside the chapel.  OHHH so funny story, Exeter chapel is one of the oldest, and the man who was building it ran out of money right after gettting through the part where normally the choir would sit, but he didn't want people to know he ran out of money, so he claimed that was his intention, to have a tiny chapel like at his manor and so now all the chapels are like that!!  The Rich, manipulating society and culture since the beginning of time.

September 26th is my friend Cait's birthday, so I was going around the city taking pictures for her birthday.  There was this big alphabetical display for important figures/moments in history.  A for Jane Austen, M for the Magna Carta, K for Kafka...I don't know what C was actually...haha.

I ended the day by finally fulfilling the obligatory telephone booth picture.  I'm a class act, what can I say?