Day 21 - Oxford / King's Lynn

This was the day our UK holiday really started.

We spent the morning poking around the covered market at Oxford and discovered a certain pub  where a certain ex-Prime Minister had set a certain record:

Then we checked out of the hotel (fortunately one of the staff could carry the suitcases down those *#$#! stairs) and cabbed out to the hire car company.

There we picked up our new companions for the next stage in our journey: Elsie the Kia and Janice the Satnav. Llyn named the satnav after every bossy female she knew. I just bit my lip.

We loaded up the car and threw ourselves in the mercy of the UK road system-

- which appeared to consist solely of connections between roundabouts. We'd been on so many roundabouts on our way to King's Lynn we were in danger of turning into Florence and Dougal.

We were doing fine until we hit the last roundabout and Janice requested that we take the "fifth exit."

This is the last roundabout:

It took four attempts to make it back to our hotel after a short trip into town. L still twitches whenever Janice announces another roundabout.

Day 20 - Oxford

Day 20 - Oxford

The very first thing we intended to do was a tour of the Bodleian Library, but we had to kill some time before the tour started and so, in the way of these things, we stumbled across a market, escaping with our wallets barely intact.

The Bodleian Library itself was astonishing.

I'm pretty much suffering from awe fatigue at the moment and the Bodleian offered no relief. The sheer amount of history encrusted within and without the walls is breathtaking. We were allowed brief, grudging access to the medieval collection, books so rare and dangerous that they were chained to the shelves, lest they start their inexorable journey to the wilds of Ebay.

I remember looking over and seeing an original volume of Samuel Johnson's dictionary. My iphone quailed before its authority.


We weren't allowed to take photos of the books, but over the road from the Bodleian is Blackwell's which, despite having a mere three floors of books, also boasts the infamous Norrington Room. I have tried to give an idea of the scale of the Norrington Room below:

Despite our awe being struck so consistently and comprehensively it had concussion, we dragged it, bruised and protesting, into the Ashmolean. We thought the Edward Lear exhibit would give it a soothing balm. We had underestimated the Ashmolean. Lear was not just a purveyor of nonsense rhymes, he was a talented painter of landscapes and wildlife, which made up the bulk of the exhibition.


The rest of the Ashmolean is staggering. Our awe had now assumed a foetal position.

Here's one example: a Stradivarius

We had just enough cognitive strength to make it to dinner, then back up all those stairs to recharge for the drive tomorrow.