Out and about

After coming over all green with envy at Angela & Carl's latest blogs, I remembered that we have just had a wonderful long weekend. Sure it didn't include spectacular sunsets over snow covered mountains (although it felt cold enough), but it did have all the old world charm of Oxford, great food and some art. Vanessa came to stay for the weekend, so on Saturday we took advantage of the decent, if somewhat threatening, weather and headed into Oxford for some sightseeing.

We started with a climb up to the top of St Mary's church to get a bit of a view, followed by a hearty english lunch of pies, mash and gravy (really delicious gourmet pies with red wine gravy. mmmm), and then a trip on the open top bus tour.

View from the top of St Mary's Church


The Radliffe Camera, from the top of St Mary's


Colourful terraces


The bridge of sighs


From the bus...One of the beards from the study of beards around the Sheldonian Theatre.


Broad St


Then after the bus tour, we wandered down to botanic gardens, and laughed at the students wobbling around on their punts, and lamented that we wouldn't be there in 15 minutes when it started pouring to see how they reacted.




So then it started raining. The likes of which Vanessa, just arrived from Oz, hadn't seen in who knows how long. It was good solid drenching rain that lasted for the next two and half days with very little let up. So we headed for more indoors activities - we visited a couple of the art shows on around oxfordshire, and bought a beautiful framed photo of the wittenham clumps. We lunched at various quaint english country pubs. And even got to climb the clumps in one of the brief spells of lighter drizzle. And we cooked - spinach with parmesan, salmon with wasabi-sweet potato mash and steamed veg, and a beef roast with fantastic yorkshire pudding, horseradish gravy, beetroot and lots of other veg. and we ate leftovers a lot.