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Saturday 10 September, To Oxford and prehistoric sites
Great Britain 2005 - part XXII
Elisabeth & Teije2006-08-28 17:53:40
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The day starts very sunny, but when we drive to Oxford, our main destination today, the sky suddenly turns black and a heavy thunderstorm breaks. The downpour slows down all traffic and we can drive no faster than 30 kilometers an hour on the highway. This is not what we ahve planned!
We park the car on a park+ride parking place on the edge of the city, since we have read it can be quite busy in the town itself. We are glad we brought an umbrella since we needit most of the time. But it is mainly a light drizzle and not a thunderstorm like we had on our way here.
Oxford is known best for its colleges and as a university town and we see old college buildings with lots of decorations and clock towers everywhere in the center. It still gives you a good prestige when you have studied at Oxford (Einstein and Clinton were two of its famous pupils). Christ Church is one of the most famous colleges and can partly be visited.
In the 12th century, English students who studied at the university of Paris, were called back to England and the first English colleges were formed. Many students came to Oxford, but there was a lot of rivalry between different groups and now and then a real uproar broke out. Part of the students then disappeared to Cambridge to found there a new university. From that time originates the rivalry between both university cities, which is now mainly fought out in the annual rwoing competition.
All colleges had their own rules and laws and to the outside world they must have looked like closed and snobby communities and very hard to become part of. In fact, the colleges still are presented a bit like that in movies and for example in the detective series with inspector Morse (we like that series) in which the colleges regularly play a part. But the drizzly weather prevents us from seeing the beautiful scenes as we know them of tv, everything now looks rather grey.
But there is no shortage of old and
...
See photographs from:
United Kingdom Gallery
