Trips

Sat., 6/11/16 – London to Oxford to the Cotswolds to Cheltenham
        We left London this morning.  Traffic was light leaving the city because all of England was coming into the city to celebrate QE II’s 90th birthday.
        Oxford is named for the river ford farmers drove oxen through.  It now has 38 independent colleges that make up Oxford University.  It is older than Cambridge, beginning in 1249.  John and Samuel Wesley were students at Christ Church College.  Rhodes Scholars study here.  The list of successful graduates is as impressive as those from Cambridge.  The students do similar weekly tutorials after attending lectures, labs, and private study.
        In the 1500’s three reforming churchmen were burned at the stake by Queen Mary’s orders.  There is a monument to those three martyrs.
        In town is the Bodleian Library that has a volume of every copyrighted UK publication (as does Cambridge and the British Library).  The 11 million volumes are accessible to scholars to be read in the Radcliffe Camera, a round building.  Tunnels and conveyor belts are used to move the books.  The Radcliffe Camera is a 1737 student reference and reading room.  Graduations take place in St. Mary the Virgin Church. Candidates for advanced degrees pass over the Bridge of Sighs to their final exams.

	Monument to the Three Martyrs
Street scene	Site of the execution of the three martyrs
Balloil College	White Horse Pub
Oxford University building	Bridge of Sighs
Radcliffe Camera	St. Mary the Virgin church - site of Oxford graduations
Interesting manhole cover shape	We had 2 ½ hours of free time so we wandered around and went back to the Covered Market where they sell all kinds of things, like at a Turkish bazaar.  We bought two spicy pies or pasties at Pieminister and sat on benches at a narrow table to eat them.  It was probably real English food, whereas everything on the main streets seemed like any city in Europe or America.         We had some time to stop in a Sainsbury market and bought peanut butter and crackers and then went into the Ashmolean Museum to use the loo.  While there we looked at an interesting exhibit explaining some of the modern techniques used to figure out if relics are real or fake and how some items are restored.  The exhibit was called “Conserving the Past.”
The Covered Market	Cute sign
Pasties	Veggies
Meat	More meat
Fish	Lunch at the Pieminister
Lunch at the Pieminister	Juxtaposition of signs
Girls' Central School
Ashmolean Museum	Our next stop was in Bladon where Churchill is buried with the rest of his family.  We looked at his grave marker.  In 2012 the Brits voted Churchill “The Most Influential Brit.”  Hitler did not have this area bombed because he thought he would move into Blenheim Palace, the nearby Churchill family home, when the Nazis controlled England.
	Churchill's grave
	We had another 3-hour stop at Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds.  The Cotswolds is an area of Jurassic limestone that is a honey brown color.  The stone is quarried near here and most houses and walls are made from these pretty stones.  At Bouton-on-the-Water, the “water” is the Windrush River that flows through town.  The town is quaint and we walked around the town center and ate scones.
	Windrush River
This is pretty good beer
The ford of the Windrush River	Building sign
Back on the bus, Liz gave us Bucks Fizz (white wine and OJ) with which to toast the Queen on her special day and then passed around Simpkins Barley Sugar Travel Sweets, which parents give their children to keep them quiet on car rides.  The candy is supposed to quench your thirst and settle your stomach.         We arrived in Cheltenham at 5:30 and checked into the Cheltenham Park Hotel and Golf Course.  It is a very nice hotel.  At 6:30 we were served dinner at the hotel.  It was very nice.

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