Welcome to the blog if you’ve never read it before.  If you were looking for something entertaining and useful, you may well have let the internet lead you down a blind alley.

Once again there has been a delay between my peregrinations and me writing this blog.  There is no excuse for this, and I now find myself in a different flat writing this up.  So, welcome to 2019 and the first of (hopefully) 8 updates this year.  O and P were both completed in early December 2018.  Q – V will be completed by the 16th May 2019.

And so at the start of December I am off again.  I decide to prepare for the journey in the only sensible way – by getting up at 4AM to play Red Dead Redemption 2.  As a result, I am somewhat nervous about my journey being interrupted by train heists but despite this obvious threat I get myself ready for an early start.  At 08:00 I leave the house, the baseball cap and age-appropriate hoody supplemented by a thick green MA1 jacket as it’s pretty cold.  I’ve also packed a towel, having learnt from my trip to Evesham.  As I walk to the station, rain-clouds are looming in the same way that youths in Slough loom around McDonalds.

I arrive in plenty of time for the 08:59 direct train to Oxford – which is, naturally, cancelled.  I’ll now have to use a stopping train, so I give myself solace by grabbing a cappuccino and a bacon bap.  I am momentarily confused by the question “Do you want that heated up?”  I bite back the sarcastic comment that leaps to mind but as I have my breakfast I do have to wonder just how many people decide to have a cold bacon bap.  The platform where I’m waiting is uncomfortably moist and I plunge into my book – Rescuing the Spectacled Bear by Stephen Fry.  It’s the first of his books I’ve read for some time and as usual I’m enchanted by his ability to turn a phrase:  “bowels griping like a Silesian fishwife” particularly strikes me as funny, though I then pause to wonder why they have to be Silesian?

The platform is largely empty with more activity outside the station where three of the street sleepers are indulging in an early morning beer.  Even so, when I get up to throw my rubbish away, my seat is taken from some ninja who appears from nowhere and sits huddled in a lime-green & black parka with little more than his nose showing.    I am reminded that I might need something similarly robust for “P”.  My ruminations are interrupted rudely by the arrival of the train – which then sits there for 10 minutes.  Finally, we are off.   I have a table to myself while on the other side of the gangway three people are crammed around a table.  One has a bizarre interest in railways and he starts recording as the train leaves Twyford station.  This gives him an excellent (if blurred) view of a series of hedges and cuttings.  I can think of no reason why he should want to do this, but he carries on recording all the way into Reading station.

My train at Reading will be leaving (as usual) from platform 7b and so I return to the delights of the stuffy waiting room and the delightfully aromatic toilets – ah, the memories of when I was a neophyte traveler. Reading station has changed though, in that they have now employed a surprisingly aggressive woman to walk up and down the platform and bellow at people to keep behind the yellow line.  I amuse myself by watching as she meanders too and fro screaming at people at the top of her voice and I wonder if she’s ever scared anyone under the train.  Luckily it doesn’t happen today and I board without incident (and without being yelled at).  I’m excited when I sit down as this train has an “at seat catering service.”  I wonder what riveting new approach to service this is and when it arrives it is revealed to be….a lady with a trolley.  Ah the powers of marketing.  I finish my book, which is brief but entertaining and would probably be of interest to two friends of mine who are planning to visit Peru next year.  (Which, of course, I completely forgot until I wrote this up).

On the approach to Oxford I wonder what I’m going to be looking at while I’m there and decide to, as usual, wander aimlessly.  I had considered a walking tour when I was there, but all the ones I found online concentrate on two things: Harry Potter and JRR Tolkein.  Apparently, the second best seat of learning in the world has nothing to offer the traveler except in its’ links to the cinema.  So I decide not to book one.  As a result, when I arrive at Oxford station I start to wander in the direction of the Town Centre.

As I head in, I find I quite like this town (much though I really want to dislike it).  It’s relatively calm and every street seems to have a nugget of interesting architecture for me to take poorly framed photos of.  On the way in, I find myself near Oxford Castle, so decide to have a look inside.

I find that tours are at specific times and while I’m considering this, I head into the gift shop where I am assaulted by a ton of Harry Potter rubbish.  Seriously, did nothing else happen here?  Buying nothing but a bookmark, I head onward, grabbing another poorly framed photograph on the way.

As I pass the Town Hall, I spot the memorial to the fallen in WWI.

Unlike other places, Oxford seems to have decided to hide theirs away in a corner.  Shame as I think they’re quite evocative.

Oxford contains the two things I had expected to see: impressive architecture and annoying people on bicycles.  It has both in abundance.  I resist the temptation to clothes-line a particularly annoying cyclist, and concentrate on enjoying the casual way that interesting architecture is around every corner.  It’s a bit weird though as so much has been re-purposed that it’s difficult to tell what buildings are actually for.  At the corner of St Aldate’s four such buildings have been converted into banks and as I walk down the road I only belatedly realise that I have just walked past the Town Hall rather than another branch of Nat West,

But as I head out towards the playing fields, the sun comes out to drive off the rain – that eye-wateringly bright sun that we get in winter (which, as we all know, is coming) and which means I am wandering around squinting at things and making half of my photographs pointless due to the glare. There are still some seriously great sights though.

Just around the corner from this magnificent edifice, I pass a tour group just as the tour guide says “Has anyone here heard of Lord of the Rings?”  I briefly regret not having my bound copy with me so that I can hurl it at his head.  Is this place just about Potter and Elves now?

I wander on muttering dark mutterings to myself and wondering how much it would cost to put out a contract on Peter Jackson.  But I can’t stay angry for long (despite everything my friends say) and the beautiful buildings soon cheer me up – especially when I get to Radcliffe Square.

Shame I can’t go inside.  But instead, I head around the corner to the replica of the Bridge of Sighs – which to my surprise is nowhere near anything even vaguely moist.

I then head around the Bodleian library and find myself in front of Blackwells — which is a huge temptation as it is nearly Christmas and I can always do with more books.  (An opinion not shared by the people who helped me move house).  Instead, I head into the town centre for some food.  Having been introduced to a Patisserie Valerie by a friend, I go for that and find one which is rather bizarrely placed around an escalator in a department store.  I order in a bizarre way which is apposite to this blog as everything begins with C – cappuccino, ciabatta and cheesecake.  Clearly healthy.

The food is pleasant but insanely over-priced.  I would also appreciate them actually serving the coffee hot, rather than at slightly warmer than absolute zero.  I, of course, do not complain.  Instead I concentrate on a couple of things.  Firstly, I use my newly purchased mobile charger to re-charge my phone — definitely a useful purchase.  Secondly, I start my next book:  Howard’s End by E M Forster.

When I leave the store, the rain clouds are looming and I wander through the town centre.  It’s weird – the place is packed and seems far more like a Saturday than a Sunday.  While wondering what to next I arrive again at the corner of St Aldate’s and spot the Carfax Tower.  Given the chance of an aerial view, I have to take it so I head inside and find yet another tiny spiral staircase.

Despite this, I head up to the top and am rewarded with a truly excellent view of the Oxford.

As I eagerly look around, it’s clear that some people come here for a very different reason.

I could stay up here for quite some time enjoying the mild feeling of vertigo as I peer over the edge – but the rain-clouds have stopped looming and decided to advance on the city.  So it’s time to head back down – at which point I find out that the staircase is far more difficult to negotiate on the way down.

Desirous of not getting soaked, I head back to the station and have a return to Slough via the delights of Reading station.  My slow walk home is under threatening clouds, which rather generously hold back until I’ve got in before starting to bucket down.  I look out and hope that this won’t stick around – “P” is a lot more exposed than Oxford was.