Jonathan Thomas (00:21)
Welcome to the Anglotopia podcast. The podcasts are people who love British travel, history and culture. This week, we're going to talk about Oxford. Oxford happens to be my favorite city in England outside of London. And I think it will make the perfect subject for a single episode. And so we're going to do the official Anglotopia guide to Oxford, similar to the way I did a guide.

to the Lake District last year. So Oxford to me is one of the most extraordinary places in Britain and most American visitors either skip it or they do it like in half a day on a bus tour and they kind of only scratch the surface and we're gonna fix that. I'm gonna sell Oxford to Angle Topia listeners who may not have been there. Or if you've been there and want to have a more intimate relationship with it, maybe this will...

we'll spur you on to spend more time there because we have this vision of Oxford in our heads that's kind of built by movies and TV shows and literature. I'm not thinking of Brideshead Revisited But what we don't realize a lot of the time is that our entire higher university education culture in the U.S. comes from Oxford and Cambridge and the British university system.

And like if you go, and a lot of the ways we set things up are very similar to the way they are in Oxford. And just to give you an easy example, I'm not far from the University of Chicago. And if you go to that campus and you didn't know you were in Illinois, you might think you were in Oxford because the architecture follows that neo-Gothic ⁓ architecture that you would find in a British university city, except it's...

It's an affectation. It's manufactured. It's not original. Whereas Oxford has a history that goes back almost 1,000 years. University of Chicago is only like 200, which is new, which is old to us, but new to somewhere like Oxford. And so this is going to be a combination of my personal history with Oxford. We'll dive a little bit into the history of Oxford. We'll talk about how to get there, what to see, what to do, and what's nearby. And I feel I should note.

I get too deep into this is that I have actually written a guidebook about Oxford, the 101 Oxford Travel Tips and Tricks, which is available from the Engel Topia store or on Amazon. And there's also an ebook version. And this is basically, this kind of fills in the gaps that normal guidebooks about Oxford kind of skip. mean, it's a good a hundred and, that's 220 pages of goodness about Oxford, detailed things to see and do there from

How the university system works what to see and do in each of the famous museums where to stay what to see what to do near Oxford It's kind of it provided a great outline for today's podcast. So highly recommend the guidebook that I wrote two years ago Available from booksellers everywhere and directly from us. The link of course will be in the show notes. So ⁓

My relationship with Oxford, ⁓ I mean, it started before I ever even went there, like most of us, because I saw in British film and TV, ⁓ the show that made me fall in love with Oxford would of course be Brides Had Never Visited, the 1980s adaptation of the classic book by Eagle and Waa, which I highly recommend the book as well. It's one of the best British books ⁓ that you'll ever read. ⁓ And...

It painted this image of this glorious citadel of scholarly culture. And ⁓ one thing you don't really realize is, and like I said, because we modeled our university system after Oxford, Oxford is infused in our TV culture.

Even the film Monsters University, the prequel to the film Monsters Inc, is set at a university that follows a lot of story beats from Brideshead and had, there's a campus and there's mean professors and all that good stuff. it's, our culture is infused with Oxford stuff. ⁓ so I first visited Oxford in 2016.

Actually, let's go back even further man. I Think this podcast is making me feel old. I first visited Oxford ⁓ Back in 2012 for the diamond Jubilee ⁓ We started a trip in Oxford so we ⁓

We were hosted by Visit Oxfordshire, or actually Visit Oxfordshire Cotswolds. ⁓ I'm not even sure if that organization exists anymore. ⁓ But we wanted to spend some time in Oxford and the Cotswolds before we moved on to Dorset and then on to London for the actual Diamond Jubilee celebrations back in 2012. We were traveling with a six month old baby. No, he wasn't six months old. He 2012.

He was like 16 months old. but he was still and he was still very much a baby. And he was just starting to walk. So he was just starting to get dangerous. ⁓ And so, so are my first memories of visiting Oxford are bleary eyed as a new parent. ⁓ We stayed ⁓ in a hotel that wasn't in Oxford that the, the comp that the organization booked for us.

and we had to take a bus into Oxford. And it wasn't far, ⁓ but I wouldn't recommend getting on a bus when it's hot and when you've just gotten off a transatlantic flight with a 16 month old. I just would not recommend it. ⁓ And we went into Oxford and saw the buildings. We ate a meal. We went back to our hotel and we were exhausted and that was it. That was our first visit to Oxford. Nothing much to write home about. We didn't take a tour. didn't...

I didn't visit any bookstores. was Oxford deserved way more than that. So it was like four years before we could go again. ⁓ One story I tell a lot of the times is most of my memories of Oxford, early memories were driving the ring road at midnight with a toddler who would not go to sleep and who would have only stopped crying if he was in the car. And so we drove the Oxford ring road.

Round and around at night, seeing nothing other than the Mini Cooper plant every time we drove by. we find the toddler finally fell asleep. We get back to the hotel and we have to get him out of the car back into the hotel through a rabbit warren of, cause this is the weirdest laid out British hotel ever, rabbit warren of hallways back to our room. And then that process he woke up and.

don't recommend traveling with toddlers. So that was my first trip to Oxford. It was four years before I was able to go back. So we went back in 2016. We were on a trip to London for, it was just a research trip, wasn't for anything particularly special, but there were a bunch of things we needed to do at once. So it was a research trip, all kind of grouped together. But I was like, you know what? really want us to spend the day in Oxford and I want us to,

to visit it properly. And so we took the train, which it's, I'm gonna wanna talk about this later, but Oxford's very close to London. You can get there by train in 45 minutes, direct train too. You don't even have to change trains. You leave London Paddington Station, you're in Oxford in 45 minutes. It's practically a London suburb. I mean, it's super close.

So we took the train we got talks really early and we did a tour a walking tour of the city, which is great We got to go into a college and see you at a great hall and do all that good stuff. It was fantastic We went to Blackwell's the bookstore. We had a pub lunch We climbed the tower at st. Mary's Church We took tons of pictures We walked around ourselves. We visited the official Oxford gift shop and bought gifts and the Oxford University Press bookstore

I noticed a trend here. like bookstores. ⁓ And so we spent the whole day there. We walked around the covered market and then we got on the train and returned to London. that was, and I was immediately spellbound. I loved Oxford immediately, especially, and I still hadn't seen it properly, but I felt I had seen it more properly than the few hours I spent in it with an angry toddler. And so I was spellbound and

That's the thing about Oxford is it grabs you once you once you visit it and you are walking around this beautiful architecture surrounded by deep, deep history. I mean, the history of Oxford is the history of England and the university's history. They don't even know how old the university is. They don't they have they have dates when it was founded that they think it was founded, but it's over 800 years old. To give you context.

When Oxford was founded, mean the Mayan civilization hadn't even come to come to its peak in North America like it's that old ⁓ and It's just Oxford has this warmth to it and I would argue it's the it's that yellow beige Cotswold stone that has that warmth and it's weathered and Oxford's very clean and tidy and it's it's a it's a

It's an industry town. It's a university town. So most of the people there are there for the university. so, you know, students ride around on their bikes and professors walk around and their robes and the colleges are very cloistered and separate. And ⁓ you just get this scholarly bookish vibe from the place that you don't really get anywhere else. So you only kind of get on a campus at an American university, but

Instead, it's a whole town because our campuses tend to be ⁓ separate from the towns they're in. Whereas Oxford is the Oxford University is the town of Oxford. And there's a whole thing about town and gown and the difference between the two. But I mean, the university is Oxford and it wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the university. And so. ⁓

I think it's the single best day trip from London. ⁓ One of the best overnight stops in England. ⁓ If you're on a tour and include today in Oxford, take advantage of it. But if you're not on a tour and you want to travel independently, it's the easy, one of the easiest places to get to from London. Like I said, 45 minutes on a train or you could take the Oxford to bus and it's an hour on the bus. You can even get to Oxford from Heathrow direct.

on the bus, not by train though, you're still, all trains lead to London, you have to go from London to get to Oxford, which is weird. And so I'm gonna go real quick into the history of Oxford before we move on to the travel tips. So ⁓ the name comes from the Ford of the Oxen, which is a river crossing on the Thames where cattle were driven across. It's a practical and glamorous origin for one of the world's greatest cities.

And ⁓ the Thames is just as important to the culture and history of Oxford as is in London because the Thames actually starts not far away in the Cotswolds and runs through Oxford. There's the Isis River as well, which is just a tributary of the Thames, and there's canals, and water is a critical element of Oxford's history. It's why it's there, because Oxford itself is kind of like

It's on like a little peninsula where all the rivers kind of have a confluence. So it was an important crossing point before it was university. It was first recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 912 AD. It was a fortified town. It was established by Edward the Elder, the son of Alfred the Great. And it was really a frontier settlement on the border between Mercia and Wessex. So, you know, if you think of this great kingdom of Wessex, which was in the southwest,

and think of Mercia, which is over here. It was kind of in the middle there. And around this grew a priory and a church. And ⁓ I'm gonna butcher the pronunciation of this, but ⁓ it was the priory of St. Friduswyd, I'm guessing. I'm making a stab at it. I always pronounce things wrong. I mean, just the way it is.

Founded in the 8th century and she became the Patriot Saint of Oxford and actually her shrine is in Christ Church, Christ Church Cathedral today. So ⁓

The university, that's what that's, we're talking about the university. So ⁓ the reason it exists is Henry II forbade English students from attending the University of Paris around 1167. so scholars gathered in Oxford instead. ⁓ And they basically founded the.

It's difficult. Don't think of it as they founded a university like we think of it today. Well, no, universities were offshoots of the church. It was usually a gathering of monks, and it was monks who would basically learn knowledge of the church and of the world and copy the books and do all that wonderful stuff. ⁓

One important thing to note is that Cambridge was founded not long after, but it was founded by exiles from Oxford. So there was a disagreement and they got kicked out of Oxford. So they went to Cambridge and founded the rival, which, and that rivalry exists today. mean, the famous Oxford-Cambridge boat race and the Thames every year is a modern manifestation of that rivalry that goes back, you know, 800 years. ⁓ And so...

The first colleges were University College, Balliol and Merton, and they were founded to reconcile Greek philosophy with Christian theology. We won't really get into the academics of all of that, because I don't know anything about it. But I misspoke earlier and I said Oxford is older than the Mayan Empire, it's older than the Aztec Empire, which is still mind blowing.

⁓ There's always been a conflict in the town between town and gown between the people who live in Oxford and the university itself. Students had special legal privileges in the town. They were technically classified as clergy way back then. So they were beyond the reach of town authorities, which really pissed people off. There were riots. ⁓ There were a ton of people were killed. Like this is wild. Like there was like there was full scale urban warfare in Oxford in 1355.

the St. Scholastica's Day riot. 63 scholars and 30 townspeople were killed, armed gang came from the country sky, scholars were reportedly scout. And so as a result of this, because the university was so powerful, the town was forced to pay annual reparations to the university and a formal ceremony. And that ceremony continued in the Victorian era and the university held legal power over the town until 1974, when the town's governance became separate from the university.

and ⁓ the Reformation changed the landscape of Oxford because ⁓ Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and the abbeys, all of them, including the ancient one that was the original corpus of Oxford, St. Fridiswade, and it was demolished ⁓ by Cardinal Wolsey, who then built Cardinal College, which is now Christchurch, which is my favorite college, which I'll get into. ⁓

Oxford became a city in 1542. It got its own bishop, its own cathedral, but it actually doesn't have a proper minster or cathedral. Christchurch is considered the cathedral of Oxford, but it's very small in cathedral terms. mean, we can get into the weeds, the definition of what a cathedral was, but save that for an architectural podcast.

⁓ But Oxford was ground zero for the Reformation. There is a famous cross in the street on Broad Street right in front of Balliol College where people were martyred and burned at the stake. ⁓ Oxford was a royalist capital, was the royalist capital during the English Civil Wars. ⁓ Oxford declared for the King. ⁓ King Charles the first made Oxford its headquarters and even held parliament there at the Divinity School. ⁓

and ⁓ yeah, was a ground zero for the civil wars. ⁓ Then as time progressed, the university became more as we would recognize a university where people would start attending it who weren't just clergy, who were people who wanted to learn. ⁓ And ⁓ the railways arrived in the 1800s. And then ⁓ one thing even many people don't know is that the

car industry is actually big in Oxford. The Morris Motor Company was founded in Cowley on the eastern edge of the city, which is the factory, the modern factory, which is the mini factory today. That's where I circled around and around and around for the angry toddler. That's where Mini Coopers are made. Well, I don't know if they're still made there. I believe Mini production was moving to continental Europe. I'm not 100 % sure, but that's where they were made, especially the classic Mini.

And then Oxford is famous for its literary heritage. You've got Lewis Carroll, wrote Alice in Wonderland in Oxford in the 1860s. then Tolkien and JR Tolkien and CS Lewis ⁓ were colleagues who wrote fantasy, the most beloved fantasy series of all time. they ⁓ founded an informal society called the Inkleins and would meet in the Inkle Child Pub.

and would read each other selections from their works while they got drunk on beer. I can only imagine what those meetings were like ⁓ to be a fly on the wall at those meetings. And we'll talk about the Eagle and Child in a little bit. ⁓ nowadays Oxford, it's a major city, 155,000 people live there, so it's a large city. Like I said, it's very close to London, just 60 miles away, and it has a colloquial.

title now, The City of Dreaming Spires, because of all the medieval architecture. ⁓ Today there are 44 colleges ⁓ and halls spread throughout the city. Like I said, it's not a campus like we think of it. It's a city that's also a university. That's the key thing to think about. ⁓ 28 prime ministers have gone there. ⁓ Oxford is a working city. ⁓ Students are there, commuters are there.

car industry, thriving tech sector. It's not just a heritage attraction, but that's what our primary interest is here. now into the tourist nitty gritty. So... ⁓

The easiest way to get there from London is by train from Paddington Station. There's usually several an hour. It takes 40 minutes to an hour, depending on how many stops there are. ⁓ Book ahead for great prices or, mean, it's because it's so close. It's like you can buy a ticket on the day and you won't ⁓ pay a fortune. ⁓ Like I said, the Oxford Tube and the X90 buses run frequently from central London from Victoria Station.

The bus takes about one hour to 90 minutes depending on traffic ⁓ And you it's really cheap. It's like it's like under 10 pounds to take the bus from from Victoria Station to Oxford The buses are comfortable. There's Wi-Fi. There's bathrooms like it's great You can also take a coach direct from Heathrow directly to Oxford. I've done this and I'll talk about why in a minute and ⁓

Like I said, you can take the bus direct from Heath Road. It takes about an hour. ⁓ You can drive there, but I don't really recommend driving to Oxford. It's a medieval city. Parking is a real problem for cars. It's not made for cars. There's very little parking. So they really want you to use the parking rights which are on the outside of Oxford. And ⁓ you need to...

So you'd use a park and ride and then you take a bus from the park and ride into central Oxford now park and rides Sometimes those are hard for Americans to wrap our heads around. I know they were when I first started using them ⁓ because At least in Oxford. It's actually not very clear where you get the bus to get back to the park and ride like it's not the same place they drop you off so ⁓ Just make sure that if you take the park and ride that you ask where they're going to pick you up to get back to the park

ride. All those fails take a taxi. You can easily get a taxi in Oxford. ⁓ Day trips versus overnight. ⁓ So this is where I'll go more into the other trips I've taken to Oxford. But first, getting around. Oxford is very compact. You can walk around most of Oxford on foot. Everything is within walking distance of the center of Oxford. Bring comfortable shoes. Even if you end up exploring the neighborhoods like Jericho or

or like everything's within walking distance. ⁓ There are areas of great taxi ⁓ services in Oxford. So if you wanna do something like go to Tolkien's grave, which is a very far walk. I mean, it's only a few miles, but it's quite a ways. You wanna take a taxi. ⁓ The taxi rank is over by the bus station. So you can take, you can easily hail a taxi and go tell them where you wanna go.

Day trips versus overnight. So this is this I'll talk about this for a little minute ⁓ You can see the major sites in a day or if like there's an exhibition you want to go see like take the train up see the exhibition walk around Oxford have lunch take the train back to London You're good, but there's a lot more to do in Oxford than just that day trip ⁓ I feel if if you grew up watching the inspector Morse mysteries, you want to savor Oxford you want to spend some time there

And so I recommend staying in a couple of days in Oxford because ⁓ during the day in Oxford, especially during peak tourist season, Oxford is packed with tourists and packed with tour buses and packed with very loud foreign tour guides yelling on loudspeakers to their tour buses full of people and traffic is deadlocked and the attractions are crowded and it can be unpleasant if you don't like a lot of people.

So, but my Oxford hack is if you stay there by like four or five o'clock in the afternoon, those people are gone. And it's just you and the people who live and work and study in Oxford. And so Oxford becomes a completely different place, much quieter. And then that's when the cultural life of Oxford wakes up because it's a university, there's a theater, there's a high quality theater, there's awesome music performances, there's...

There's movie theater. There's bookstores with talks and everything. So there's always something going on in Oxford. A lot of things happen at night. And so you might want to be there for that. ⁓ Two nights minimum. There's plenty of nice hotels in Oxford. If you've got a big budget, stay at the famous hotel where Inspector Morse would drink. The name escapes me, but the link will be in the show notes.

But there are plenty of budget hotel options in Oxford. But to me, if you want to have the quintessential Oxford experience, then you need to do the Oxford experience. And that's an actual thing. So the Oxford experience is essentially a program that lets you come stay in Oxford for a week, learn from Oxford professors,

for the week, dine in the dining hall for a week, and basically you get to stay in the dorms, or as they call them, the rooms, and you basically get to live as an Oxford student for a week. These happen in the summer. ⁓ A couple of universities do this. I've done a couple different types of experiences. So one, ⁓ I did through the English-Speaking Union. They do a yearly Oxford course. ⁓

summer they do several different types of things but mine was at Worcester College and they did a history of the English language and you get ⁓ you stay in the rooms and you get usually the morning is taken up by the course and the afternoon is usually either extracurricular activity or a special tour then you have dinner in the evenings in the dining hall then you have your time to yourself ⁓ they keep you pretty busy though and then on

But there's also the Oxford experience, which is through Christchurch College. it's actually, should, boop. They don't call it Christchurch College. I've been corrected on this before I even studied there. It's just Christchurch. Even though it's a college, it's not Christchurch College, it's just Christchurch. ⁓ And so it's through Christchurch and they run ⁓ six weeks of one week courses through July and August. ⁓

they release the schedule in November of the previous year. Just so Google the Oxford Experience or I'll put the link in the show notes and you wanna book your space when the courses become, when they release the schedule in November because the really popular courses fill up very quickly and then there's a wait list. what they offer is you get the course,

You pay a fee. The fee depends on the course, it's usually because you're also buying your room and board. And also there's a scale based on if you want a single, a double, or if you're going to stay with a couple, if you want your wife to come along. So it can be between 1500 and 2000 pounds per person to do this. So it's like 2000 to 2000 3000 dollars. But

⁓ You basically get your breakfast, ⁓ sometimes your lunch, and definitely your dinner included. So you get room and board and the course, and sometimes the excursions are a little extra, but otherwise everything's included. And so ⁓ it's a great way to spend a week in Oxford. You get to basically pretend to be a student if you never, you know, cause I went to a

a US state school, I didn't ever got to go to Oxford, but you can pay and have your own little Oxford experience. you get to, there's parties, like you get to meet at the beginning, you get to mingle with all the professors and the staff of the college. And they basically pull out all the stops to make you have this university experience. then ⁓ throughout the week, usually the morning is you're in class with your lecturer.

then around lunchtime you're done and then you're kind of on your own for lunch. But they do serve like a cold lunch in the meals room in the great hall, which the great hall at Christchurch was the model for the hall in Harry Potter. So if you go to Christchurch to do this at Christchurch, like you get like that Harry Potter experience, which is great. Like a lot of people were there for the Harry Potter experience. And.

And then you'd have dinner, formal dinner every night in the great hall. And then in the afternoons, I'm getting ahead of myself, in the afternoons, there will usually be an extracurricular activity related to your course. So a tour of something, the Oxford Experience Lower Range, a walking tour of Oxford.

So for example, when I went ⁓ and did the Oxford experience a few years ago, I did a course on Horatio Nelson. And so our various experiences were there was a walking tour of Oxford, which I've done a walking tour of Oxford several times. I didn't do that. ⁓ They did a tour of the college itself and the history of the college. That was great. That was fascinating. I did that. One of our extracurriculars was we all got together in the room after.

our lecture and after lunch everything we watched that Hamilton woman because that's related to Nelson great film by the way and then ⁓ One of the days there one of the optional excursions was we got to go visit a local stately home ⁓ The name escapes me right now because I didn't write it in my notes But it was ⁓ Rue Shum Park ⁓ Which has some of the most beautiful gardens in England

garden expert, Monte Don says it's the most beautiful garden in England. ⁓ I'm a star head guy, but it is a beautiful garden. And we got an exclusive tour of the house. The house normally isn't open to the public. So that was super cool because the house is like a, it's a great example of a family still living in the aristocratic house that they've lived in for 500 years, but it's not because it's not normally open to the public. And it's so expensive to maintain kind of has that.

that worn shabbiness to it that you don't really get to see in a National Trust property, which is so meticulously perfectly maintained. So we did that. And then the last excursion we did was we took a bus, tour bus down to Portsmouth, which is two hours by bus. And we did the Portsmouth Historic Dockyards. We visited Victory, we visited the Mary Rose, we had lunch, and then we visited the HMS Warrior, we spent the whole day there. It was great. I've been there before, but it like...

To have a proper historian tour guide take us through all this was amazing and so but there are other courses like well the most popular course that literally fills up within hours is ⁓ It's like the criminology course on British murder That's the most popular one. It's very popular with lawyers ⁓ and That's that's the caliber of people you'll usually meet in these courses because they're very expensive You're gonna come across lawyers doctors retired people ⁓

I know a travel hack for lot of retired people is they will literally, ⁓ they'll basically, some people would book out six courses or they would either book a course and then you can still book room and board with the college if you want to and stay on and they'll use Oxford as a base to explore England for the summer. ⁓ So that's an option there. I'm getting ahead of myself.

And so, and then in the evenings you have formal dinner in the dining hall, which is optional. You don't have to go. I went a few times and then one night for one, on one of the nights you will be invited to high table, which is a very quintessentially British experience. You get invited, you have to dress formally, suit and tie to show up at the right time to mingle. You're given port and you mingle with the professors and the administration of the university.

and you basically get to have that high table experience ⁓ and you have a formal dinner. ⁓ Not much of formal dinner guy, but I enjoyed it. ⁓ Met some interesting people. ⁓ And so that's the Oxford experience. There's also a new Oxford experience, not called that, it's something else where you can do like a three week course where you actually get like university credit and a proper like

a certificate when you complete it. ⁓ The nice thing with the Oxford Experience courses is there's no testing. You don't have to write a paper or anything. You're literally just doing it for your own fulfillment. But there are summer courses that adults can take that have requirements where you have to research something, you have to write a paper. ⁓ Again, I'll link to all this in the show notes and you can do the research on your own. But to me,

I love that Oxford gives these experiences in the summer for when students aren't there for people who want to have the experience.

I last did it in 2022. That's when I did the Nelson course. I am dying to do it again. Hopefully within the next few years I'll do another course. So I really want to do, and this is one of the ones that fills up very quickly. So I have to know I can go the next summer. I want to do the course on Enigma and British Spying in World War II. The professor that did my Nelson course also does that one and that's super popular and that's his specialty. And you get to go to Bletchley Park and all that. So.

hoping I can do that one of these coming years. ⁓ But accommodation, so I might be getting ahead of myself here. Let me get back to my notes.

⁓ I will talk about accommodation. So like I said, there's plenty of hotels there and if you don't want to do the Oxford experience, ⁓ if you go to Oxford outside of term time, which is ⁓ so Oxford has three.

has three terms ⁓ and in between the three terms there's usually a two week break and then in the summer there's like a six week break. And so those times a year the students aren't there, they've gone home or whatever, ⁓ the rooms are rented out to people who want room and board while they're staying in Britain. And it's usually an affordable way to stay in Oxford because they're just doing it to basically have people in the rooms and keep the kitchen staff turning over. And so you can pay for room and board.

You get breakfast and maybe dinner and the great hall if you want. And it's a great way to stay in the college and get that experience in Oxford. you'll stay in Oxford in a formal way. Because there aren't a ton of hotels in Oxford and you won't usually have a problem finding a hotel. But if you want to stay in Central Oxford and a college, you can do that. And I'll put links in the show notes on how to do that.

So the university system in Oxford works a little differently than the American university works. So the university is sort of a construction. ⁓ There's like a, it's an overarching organization, but really the core of university is that's 44 colleges and each one of them is semi-independent. like when you, if you were to apply to Oxford, ⁓ what you really need to do is you apply to a college.

and then the college basically chooses you. And which college you apply to depends entirely on what you're going to study, what professors you want to study under. And ⁓ it's a very complicated process. And so... ⁓

Most of the colleges are open to the public, but they have very limited hours. They're open to the public. ⁓ You can't just wander around everywhere you want to go. There's limited areas where you can go. And if exams are going on, usually mid-April to mid-June, ⁓ they don't let anybody in on tours unless they're pre-arranged. so, but, and all the colleges will be open on different days and different hours. So if there's a specific college you want to visit,

And then look at those colleges up in advance and find out when they're going to be open so you're not disappointed. ⁓ Off the top of my head, ⁓ the ones you must visit are Christchurch, which is one of my favorites, the Great Hall inspired Harry Potter, the stairway was used in the films, Christopher Wren designed the tower, ⁓ the meadow is beautiful, 13 prime ministers went there, Lewis Carroll went there.

The church Which they call a cathedral is gorgeous They even have an art museum and there's a mishmash of architectural styles ⁓ The library is super is super gorgeous and they even have Cardinal Wolesey's hat which is one of the most cherished possessions of the university So Christchurch definitely visit Christchurch if you can Magdalen College is beautiful CS Lewis taught there. It's right on the river

It's got stunning cloisters and a chapel. ⁓ I also recommend Worcester College, which is a little further off the beaten path at Oxford, but Worcester College has the biggest grounds of any Oxford school. And when you go inside, ⁓ I mean, the library is gorgeous, the buildings are gorgeous, ⁓ but really the gardens are gorgeous. They're along the river there and ⁓ they're just, they're amazing.

I highly recommend a walk. And it's so weird, you go inside, and that's what's really lovely about the colleges is they're cloistered. And what cloistered means is that all the colleges are surrounded by walls. And you go inside and you're cut off from Oxford. And back in the day, students, if they got locked out at night, they didn't get back before curfew, they'd be locked out and they wouldn't be let in. And so it's different now. They get key fobs and they can let themselves in. But the...

⁓ So like you go into the gardens for Worcester College and like you can't hear the rest of Oxford and Oxford is very bustling. So it's very cool. Definitely visit Meryton College. Wadham College is the college they use for Brideshead Revisited for the filming. So you might want to see that. ⁓ The strangest Oxford College is All Souls College. ⁓ And that's the one.

where there are no students, there's only fellows, which is interesting, I think. It exists only to perpetuate itself, they don't educate anybody. And so if you're not sure if a college is open, and this is important, so every college will have a porter's lodge at the front and the porters are essentially the security guards. They're a little...

They're a little more than that. They have a tradition that goes back hundreds of years, like everything in Oxford. And the porters are basically, ⁓ they're responsible for access who gets in and out of the college, but they also look after the students. They know who all the students are. That's where their mail goes. If they need a taxi, the porter will call them for you. They're basically kind of like, they're like a personal valet for every student. ⁓ And there'll usually be a staff of them.

And so they're usually very friendly and you can, and that's if you're not sure if a place is open for tours. I mean, most places will put out a signpost that they're open, but if you're not sure if they're open, you just go into the Porter's Lodge and ask and they'll, they'll tell you. ⁓ The, and then another aspect of the college life or the scouts, the scouts are the people who basically look after the physical needs of the students. So they.

They clean the dorms, they keep everything neat and tidy. And then there's the food service. And so the kitchens, which have to feed an army every day, the food's great. At least at Christchurch it was great. And so it was at Worcester College, it was great. So I'm 43 minutes in and I still haven't gotten to everything yet. So there's so much to talk about with Oxford. So.

⁓ The essential sites. So if you've got a day or a couple days, here's what I recommend seeing or making sure you see. ⁓ Bodleian Library, one of the oldest, most important libraries in the world. Over 13 million items. It's the second largest library in Britain. The British Library is bigger, believe it or not. But it's also what they call ⁓

I'm not sure actually what the proper term is, but it's the library of record. ⁓ So every publisher has to send them the books that they publish. And so that they have a record of every book ever published, essentially. And they have so many books that not all of them are in Oxford. And the strange thing about the Bodleian Library is that it's actually several libraries. And... ⁓

The Divinity School, which is the oldest teaching room at the university, is part of the Bodleian. You can get in there for free. There's no books in there, that's based on, Harry Potter was based on that. It was used in the filming. Then there's Duke Humphrey's Library, which is one of the oldest libraries in the world that has that beautiful old library smell. There's the Radcliffe Camera, which is that round building in the middle of the square with the famous dome.

There's the Weston Library, which is across the road from the Bodleian, which is the new library. And I've been in all of them and all of them are beautiful and great and they all have their own specific purposes. So what I recommend is you do a guided tour of the Bodleian Library because ⁓ they do guided tours on select days. And those are a great way to see all bits of the library. Like you can like I did a half day tour where we got to see the Comfrey's library. We got to go on the Radcliffe camera.

got to go in the tunnels underneath. We got to go to the Weston Library and see some artifacts. Worth doing those tours, because they don't let you take pictures in the library. So if you want to see these places, the only way to see them is to go see them yourselves and you can't take pictures. ⁓ usually the Divinity School, which they use in Harry Potter, that will be included on many Oxford walking tours. But most of the walking tours can't go in the libraries. ⁓

So you'll need to book those in advance. Because the library runs the tours themselves. I will put those links in the show notes. And I'll also put links in the show notes to Oxford Walking Tours, which I've gone on several of their tours. I on their Morse Walking Tour. Highly recommend if you're a Morse fan. So then there's Radcliffe Square, where the Radcliffe Camera is at the center. And one of the most beautiful urban spaces in Britain.

and then Oxford. It's a great place to linger. There's cafes there. Highly recommend climbing the St. Mary's Church on the high street, which is on the other side of the Radcliffe camera because you pay a small admission and then you climb to the top and you get expansive views of Oxford and the country surrounding Oxford. It's a little cramped climbing up the little narrow stairs. So if you're claustrophobic, you may get a little anxious.

⁓ But it's worth it once you get to the top, the views are incredible. ⁓ You must visit the Ashmolean Museum. It's Britain's first public museum founded in 1683. It's completely free. It's got art and archaeology from all over the world. ⁓ You know, they say the British Museum is a repository of the world's culture or the world's culture that was looted by the British Empire. The Ashmolean is an older repository and I mean,

One of the most famous things they have is the King Alfred Jewel, which is from the ninth century Anglo-Saxon era. And it's one of the greatest treasures of British history. They've got the lantern Guy Fawkes carried on gunpowder plot night. They've got mummies. They've got Raphael drawings. There's some beautiful Turner paintings in there. It's completely free, easily. You could spend half a day in there walking around on all the beautiful objects of human history. And it has a nice cafe.

Then there's the Pitt Rivers Museum. So this one's really hard to describe. ⁓ it's weird, you have to get to it through another museum. So the University Museum of Natural History is worth visiting, beautiful Victorian temple to natural history. They've got the skeleton of a dodo bird there. ⁓ Dinosaurs, ⁓ tons of natural history stuff.

I love that stuff. It's a fun museum on its own. But through the museum is also the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is, I can only describe it as the Victorian cabinet of curiosities. And it's a museum of cultural history. And so in it, in all these beautiful glass cases, many of them, which were set up in the Victorian era, are objects from cultures all over the world. ⁓

The most famous objects which I don't think are on display anymore were the shrunken heads. They were lurid when I saw them. They've got Polynesian canoes. They've got samurai outfits. They've got weapons, armor, you name it. And it's one of the strangest rooms. It's dimly lit. It's quiet in there because maybe people don't even know it's there. And it's just a strange

in wonderful melange of human culture from all over the world and ⁓ you will easily get lost in there exploring all these curiosities and it really shows you the breadth of interesting human culture that you may have never even encountered. So highly recommend the Pitt Rivers Museum. ⁓ If your views of Oxford from St. Mary's were enough, then visit Carfax Tower. ⁓

99 steps and you get another pay a small fee you get another great view of the skyline the There's a ruined castle the Oxford Castle in the Oxford prison the prison is now hotel the castles there and you can explore the ruins there Highly recommend the covered market Dating from 1774 that is older than America one of the best covered markets in England

And it's it's proudly filled with independent traders butchers bakers coffee shops. That's a pie shop. It's My favorite cafe there Brown's cafe is in there which has been in tons of media like Morse great salt of the earth ⁓ food ⁓ greasy spoon Great place to stop for lunch, and it's really affordable ⁓

There's also a Ben's Cookies in there and Ben's Cookies is my British weakness. So there's a Ben's Cookies in Oxford and then there's Ben's Cookies in London. I think actually the one in Oxford is the OG. So ⁓ highly recommend going to the covered market. You can spend an hour there exploring. And then the Botanic Garden is also a wall garden, riverside walk, wonderful place to decompress. ⁓

And then there's also Broad Street. ⁓ So Broad Street is like the main thoroughfare where Bailey Old College is right in front. I mentioned this earlier, there's the cross and the road where the martyrs, that's a very important spot in Oxford. ⁓ And also the shopping in Oxford is fantastic. ⁓

The High Street, not Prof Street, the High Street, is kind of parallel.

over there. Look at a map of Oxford. I'll put a map in the show notes. ⁓ The High Street has a ton of great British brands. ⁓ There's been some turnover since the last time I was there, so I'm not sure what's there now, but tons of great shops. But then the, if you're gonna be in Oxford, the star of Oxford are its bookstores. ⁓

Have actually done trips into Oxford just to go to the bookstores We were in Dorset and I was like I gotta go to Blackwell's Blackwell's Is my probably my favorite bookstore in the world and it's It's hard it's a new they sell new books so like it's like a Actually, Blackwell's is owned by Waterstones now. So I mean

technically it's just another branch of water stones, Blackwell's has been there for like 200 years. ⁓ But then, so you go into Blackwell's and there's these two parallel rooms where all the books are, but then you go down

these stairs and you go into the Norrington room, which famously has five miles of shelving. And it's this big cavernous underground space under Trinity College. it is, ⁓ I've never gotten out of there without spending several hundred pounds. Let me just say that. So many books. ⁓ And the staff there are always really helpful.

What I normally do is I'll go down to the checkout down there or the stack of books and they'll package them up in brown paper and send them back to me in the US so that I have a nice little souvenir for me when I get home. They don't charge exorbitant rates to ship. ⁓ Things might be different now with tariffs and all that. ⁓ I can't say for sure how much that will affect shipping now. ⁓

All I know is I order from blackwells.com regularly because I like to give them the business and they have a nice US facing ⁓ ordering systems that gives you the price of US dollars, including shipping. So it's a great place to order books from if you want books from Britain. It usually includes the tax too. So you don't have to pay the tariff if you order from the website. Anyway, I'm getting off the track here, but Blackwells isn't the only bookstore in London. They've also are in Oxford.

They've got a music store where you can buy music and sheet music and CDs. They also have an art and design bookstore across the street where you can buy posters and art design books and all that. Blackwell's kind of has like a monopoly in central Oxford there. And then the Oxford University Press, one of the most famous academic publishers in the world, who also publish regular books. They have their official store on the high street. ⁓

They've also got a great selection. You can find bargains there too. ⁓ There's also one of my favorite little book shops called The Last Bookshop. It's up in Jericho. And it's a mixture between a used bookstore and a remaindered bookstore where you get books that have been remaindered from the publisher. You can usually get some great deals there. ⁓ And then ⁓ I think it's St. Andrew's Bookstore, which is an antiquarian bookstore.

fun place to go, beautiful old books if you like old books. ⁓ Unfortunately, a lot of the places that you would have seen in ⁓ Morse are no longer there, but highly recommend bookstores in Oxford. You could easily do a day trip of just bookstores. Speaking of books, so the literary connections in Oxford, ⁓ Lewis Carroll, he was a mathematics.

Lecturer at Christchurch and wrote Alice in Wonderland. Alice was the Dean's daughter. ⁓ Of course, there are souvenir shops for Alice in Wonderland as well as souvenir shops for Harry Potter. ⁓ Oxford is a tourist town. There's plenty of souvenir tourist hat shops. ⁓ Take your pick. I tend to avoid those places. ⁓ So see, Tolkien and Lewis.

The Inklings met at the Eagle and Child, which is on St. Giles Street across from St. John's College. And they met there every Tuesday morning throughout the 1930s and 40s. And they would read their works from each other and talk about the great literary issues of the day and have lots of beer, I assume. so unfortunately, the Eagle and Child has been closed since COVID.

it's not 2026, it's still closed. So what happened is ⁓ the pub got bought out, changed hands I think several times. I don't think it's changed hands. It's a really complicated history, but basically it's been closed because of this. And so they have a new landlord now I believe, which is the Ellison Foundation I wanna say. I'm not 100 % sure. I'll put a link in the show notes to the latest article about it, but.

Essentially, the people who bought the building are opening some kind of think tank. But because of the historic nature of the pub, ⁓ the pub has to stay a pub according to the heritage laws and rules and regulations in England. the people who have bought the building are going to refurbish the pub, but not strip of its character because they can't strip of its character because it's a legally protected special place. And so the pub should be reopening either this year or next year, I believe. So

literary fans haven't been able to go there and have a pint for quite a while. Like I said, since COVID, it was closed when I was there in 2022. But I did visit it in 2017 when I did my first course on Oxford, had lunch there. I can't give a review because it's gonna be completely different by the time it reopens. But it's there, you can take a picture out front, you can take a picture through the door.

They can't go in there. But when it reopens, you can go to the room where Tolkien and Luthor would meet and the Inklings would meet. It's really cool. Highly recommend it if you really want that. Get that sip of literary heritage there. ⁓

⁓ Oscar Wilde studied at Maudlin. ⁓ Philip Pullman set his Dark Materials books in Oxford. ⁓ Jordan College and the books is based on Exeter College. The Botanic Gardens featured prominently in the story. ⁓ Highly recommend the drama they made a few years ago on the BBC. ⁓ It was filmed in Oxford. ⁓ You can do a Philip Pullman tour of Oxford. You can read the books, it's great.

⁓ Inspector Morse Endeavor were filmed extensive and Lewis works filmed extensively in Oxford, you know, and so they recognize a lot of clandestine the Randolph Hotel That's the name of the famous hotel the Morse Hotel It's now a very upscale hotel You can go in there and see the pub or there's a chair for for more than all that ⁓ I did a Morse walking tour back in

when did Harry and Meghan get married? think that was 2018. 2018, that was really worth seeing and doing. You can book those through the official Oxford Tourist Authority link in the show notes. Like I said, Harry Potter was filmed in the Divinity School. Duke Comfrey's library was the restricted section of the library in the Harry Potter films, the Bodleian Courtyard.

Chamber of Secrets, the Christchurch Dino Hall is the inspiration for the Great Hall. All those sites are there and worth seeing. ⁓ I don't think they're filming the new TV show in Oxford at all. I'm pretty sure they're gonna rely heavily on sets ⁓ or other locations. ⁓ That's very disruptive filming, especially in Oxford. ⁓ Let's see.

So if you're in Oxford, what's nearby? ⁓ There's a ton of things to see and do in Oxford that are outside of Oxford itself. And a lot of them are really easy to get to. ⁓ First of all, Blenheim Palace. If you're in Oxford and you don't go to Blenheim Palace, you've wasted a trip to Oxford. Blenheim Palace is really close to Oxford, eight miles.

⁓ It's the birthplace of Winston Churchill. It's the only non-royal, non-episcopal palace in England. That's UNESCO World Heritage Site. The grounds are stunning. The house is stunning. Built for the first Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill. It was his gift from a grateful nation for the victories during the Peninsula Wars. Designed by Van Borough. The grounds by Capability Brown. Monumental Baroque architecture. is... ⁓

I would argue probably the greatest house in Britain, still owned by the ancestral family who still live there. You can take a tour of their apartments if you like. And like I said, it was the birthplace of Churchill 1874. You can go visit the room where he was born and you can see his paintings and see a ton of Churchill history because he spent a ton of time there as a child and as an adult because while they were the second...

sons of the Churchill family. were all very close. Winston Churchill was in the poor branch of the family. Churchill's also buried nearby in the Bladen Churchyard, where the Churchill family is traditionally buried. So if you are a Churchillian, I mean, you need to go to Blenheim Palace for that. There's a great new exhibition in the basement on Churchill. You can see his paintings there. They're

They're very proud of that most recent Churchill connection. ⁓ But the house itself is gorgeous. You can do a self-guided tour or you can do a guided tour. They also do behind the scenes tours of the private apartments and the private state rooms that you can arrange in advance. ⁓ There are miles of walking trails on the grounds. There's a ton of things to do in the gardens for families. ⁓

⁓ And it's really easy to get to from Oxford. So there's a bus ⁓ I Forget what the number is but you literally get on the bus that goes right it drops you off right in front of the gates of London Palace ⁓ It takes like 40 minutes to get there, but it's one of the most beautiful 40 minute rides you will take ⁓ You the drops you off at the gate. It's like a half mile walk from the gate. It's a big the estate is big

And then you can walk to the entrance and do the tour of the house and explore the grounds and then just return to the bus stop and there are buses every hour to take you back to Oxford. So if you're going to be in Oxford for a couple days, take the bus and spend the day at Blundon Palace. You can also take a You can catch a taxi if you're staying in an Oxford College or Porter will book a taxi for you. So. ⁓

The Cotswolds are not far away. ⁓ Actually, there's different kinds of Cotswolds. There's the Oxfordshire Cotswolds, and then there's the Gloucestershire Cotswolds. ⁓ But I love the Oxfordshire Cotswolds. Actually, Burford, Burton on the Water, Chipping Norton, they're all nearby. ⁓ Those are harder to get to. There's buses. You can make a taxi or you can book a car. ⁓ You could also take the train to get to like the bigger cities. ⁓

Stratford-upon-Avon is not far, Shakespeare Birthplace, that's an hour by car train. That's a great doable day trip from Oxford. ⁓ You can also do that from London if you wanted to, but if do it from Oxford, it's not far. I I love the Midlands. There's so much to see and do in the Midlands. ⁓ The Rousham House, I mentioned that earlier in the podcast. So that's 12 miles away. Again, it takes like 40 minutes to get there. One of the...

finest but least visited English landscape gardens. So built in the 1730s, ⁓ the only William Kent design garden to survive intact, hidden gem for garden lovers. ⁓ But if you can arrange to ⁓ get on a book tour of the house, which they only do on certain days, and if you're in a group, highly recommend seeing the inside of the house. And if you're a train guy, like I am, the ⁓ did, did cot? Did cot? Did cot.

tell me in the comments. The Didcot railway center is not far. You can even take the train there if you want. ⁓ And they've got a whole heritage museum dedicated to railways and you can ride steam trains and do all the wonderful train things that people like. And then one more thing that I should mention is close to Oxford that may appeal to a lot of people is the Bister outlet mall. Bister is essentially a suburb of Oxford.

They now have a train station, so you can actually take the train there. It's like one stop from Oxford. And it's an outlet mall with all the famous British and global fashion brands, very popular with tourists. ⁓ If you want to go do some shopping, go to Bistr. So ⁓ time to wrap this up, because I am well over an hour. I knew this was going to go over when I sat down to do this. ⁓ So if you're going to be in Oxford,

Book ahead for the tours you want to see. Oxford is busy year round, these tours can fill up. So a few months in advance if you're going to Oxford, look up the tours you want to take and book them, especially the Bodleian Library tours, they book up. Same with Bunum Palace, if you're to go to Bunum Palace, book the tours in advance you want to see. Avoid exam season, mid-April to mid-June, ⁓ because you won't really be able to go into the colleges because of...

They restrict it during those times. ⁓ I Would tend to avoid Oxford in July I've done Oxford in July it can get really hot in Oxford and there is no air conditioning in these medieval buildings The new buildings will have air conditioning, but there's not a lot of new buildings in Oxford. So ⁓ for Americans who are not used to to the heat and and An Oxford in July it gets stifling we hot

and the old stone buildings absorb heat and they keep it at night. Thankfully, every time I've gone, the first time I went, just bought a fan. That's actually my travel hack if you're in Britain in the summer. The first thing you should do is go to ⁓ an Iron Munker or a hardware store or anywhere and just buy a fan. ⁓ But the college and my second Oxford course, they gave everybody fans. And so I tend to just say cool. ⁓

But July is hot. August can be hot too. Late August, it starts to cool off. September should be pleasant. Also be prepared for Oxford to be wet. It rains a lot in Oxford. ⁓ Like I said, Oxford's really busy during the day. So from like 10 o'clock to like four o'clock, that's prime tourist time. That's when it's really busy. ⁓ So get an early start if you want to avoid those crowds. Most things won't open till 10.

But if you're there at 10 a.m., you'll still get to see things first before the hordes of tourists arrive. ⁓ Save museums, I kind of tend to save for the afternoon, because they start to thin out as the tourists bus leave. ⁓ And don't try to do too much. Two or three things a day beats 10, seeing 10 things really rushed. I know American vacation time is very limited, so, but.

Oxford wants to be savored. ⁓ I especially do it on foot. ⁓ It's the most walkable city you can imagine. You can walk everywhere. Nowhere is very far from everywhere else. You're going to have sore feet at the end of the day. You're going to get double, triple your steps in, but you cannot get a sense of Oxford unless you're on foot exploring the nooks and crannies and alleyways. Get off the tourist trail. ⁓

Walk along the Thames River towpath or the canals. ⁓ You know, savor the insides of the colleges if you're able to get in. If the weather is nice, rent a punt and you can, you know, from the Maudlin River Bridge Boathouse and you can punt yourself along the river and have a lazy day. I recommend somebody do the punting and you do the relaxing. I think you can also hire somebody to do the punting for you if you're intimidated by it.

And if you have.

Go to the bookstores, ⁓ avoid the Harry Potter stores and the tourist traps. mean, you can get that Harry Potter tat anywhere. You can buy it online. You don't need it from Oxford. ⁓ Visit the real local stores. ⁓ The one store that everybody should visit in Oxford is one of my favorite stores in Britain. And it's a hard store to describe.

but it's called, if you're a bookish type, you will love this store. It's called Scriptum and it's on Turl Street and it's ⁓ like a little hole in the wall. And in there, if you like books, reading and writing, you will love this place. ⁓ They have the most beautiful ⁓ blank books and journals and diaries. And in fact, ⁓ this, it's one of my most prized possessions. This is beautiful.

blank book with these beautiful cream pages and the paper is such high quality. This was very expensive. ⁓ I don't remember how much it was. It was made in Hungary though, which it's not British, but they stock stuff like this and it's leather like it's one of my most cherished possessions. And I cherish it so much. actually haven't written anything in it because I'm afraid I'm going to ruin it by writing in it. But one day I will. So ⁓ they sell stuff like this. They sell, you know, ⁓ they sell

bookmarks and ⁓ they sell fancy pens and they sell statuary and ⁓ like I said it's a hard storage to define. I'll put a link in the show notes but you should definitely visit it. ⁓ I love it. It's one of my favorite places to go. I would actually just make a quick trip into Oxford just to go there if I wasn't already going to Blackwells. that's the script. Like I said, in the show notes. I'm just gonna leave that right there.

So.

To wrap this up, hour and 12 minutes in, sorry folks. ⁓ Oxford Rewards time and attention. You can do it in a day, but don't do it in a day. Do it in two at least. If you can, do an Oxford Experience course. ⁓ You basically get to inhabit the city in a way you can if you're only there for two days. You get to become a temporary student, a temporary local. get to...

relive the fantasy that you got to go to Oxford University, you get to learn some interesting things, you get to have meals in the great halls and go on interesting tours. ⁓ I feel like they have not sponsored this podcast. I am promoting them for free. ⁓ Let's see. ⁓

So if you've been to Oxford, what did we leave out? Please leave a comment in the show notes or on social media. What was your favorite thing in Oxford? If you, like I said, we've written a guidebook on Oxford. I have not even scratched the surface of even what's in the book. So if you want a great guide on how to plan some great time in Oxford, you can pick up our guidebook. It's on the Angletopia Store, link in the show notes.

If you enjoy the Engel-Topia podcast, please like, subscribe, or comment. And if you also enjoy the Engel-Topia podcast, please consider joining the Friends of Engel-Topia Club, where you can ⁓ support the work that we do, get exclusive articles every week, and you also get this podcast two days before everybody else and without ads. So please ⁓ join the club. And that'll be it. Now I'm gonna go dream of Oxford for the rest of the afternoon.