** Disclaimer: There are unfortunately no pictures with this blog because it’s 3:45AM and I need to sleep before I catch my early bus out of town tomorrow. Give a man a break.

The weather in Oxford the past few days can best be described, with the aid of my good friend alliteration, as a symphony of sensationally sumptuous sunshine. Finally, after a long, unseasonably cool, cloudy spring, we have had a prolonged period of sun and blue skies. Oxford on a sunny day is a sight to behold. And so, for parts of this entry of my bloggery, I have taken to the University Botanic Gardens (one of my very favourite places here) to compose in the shade of an apple tree and allow the glorious explosion of floral beauty to work its magic on me.

This will be my final Oxford blog. Later this morning I leave this most wonderful of cities and depart for my final adventure abroad through Scotland. My trip will take me to Oban, Tobermory, Glencoe, Cannich, Inverness and finally to Edinburgh. I have been looking forward to Scotland all semester, and I figure it is as fitting an end as any to this magical experience. Stay tuned for what will inevitably be another very lengthy bit of prose documenting my Scottish ramblings. But back to Oxford. I have thought for a while about how to write my final Oxonian entry and I finally settled on a format whose inspiration comes from the Sound of Music. Here are a few of my favourite things about Oxford. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens not included.

1) Blackwell’s

As I have said on a number of occasions, I can not come downtown without being subconsciously lured into the sweet-smelling, creaky-floored warehouse of knowledge that is Blackwell’s bookshop. Today was no exception but since I have begun the depressing and arduous task of packing I decided to resist any purchases (a great feat if I do say so) in the interests of my baggage allowance. My initial impression of Blackwell’s (see earlier blog) has not changed at all. I still can’t help but feel content as I wander inside, away from the hustle and bustle and slowly browse through my favourite sections: nature and wildlife, gardening, environmental issues/geography, the “3 for 2” tables, and of course the walls of Ordnance Survey maps. I acknowledge the fact that Blackwell’s is a chain, but there is something different about the original store – it feels like an independent bookstore. The building has character, the staff are knowledgeable and eager to chat, and the chairs are comfy and plentiful. Three things which are unfortunately lacking in Chapters and Indigo. Basically Blackwell’s feels like a bigger, more academic version of Books and Company in Picton. And that is high praise indeed.

2) The Ashmolean

The world’s first university museum lives up to the hype and is truly one of the most magnificent museums I have visited here. Its collections are staggering, featuring an amazing assortment of artefacts and artworks. Mummies, ancient Greek sculptures, Chinese ceramics, Roman coins, a pristine Stradivarius violin, drawings by Michaelangelo and da Vinci, paintings by Turner, Monet, Van Gogh, Pissarro and Picasso, and I could go on. It’s a wonderful resource that can only be found in a city so imbued with academia. Its collections are rivaled only by the British Museum and just like the British Museum, the Ashmolean is free. It is going to be a major adjustment to pay to enter museums when I go home, and not an adjustment I am looking forward to. I understand the negative effects of free museums (ie overcrowding, too many annoying kids who don’t want to be there, the fact that free museums still don’t really appeal to lower class people as was intended, and the fact that free museums require great government spending), BUT some of the indispensable things that governments should be spending money on, are the arts, culture, and education; three things that are central to the mandate of any good museum. Furthermore, museums offer enormous economic benefits to their city through tourism (the Ashmolean draws a million visitors a year), they are a canvas for unique, contemporary architectural expression (good and bad, read: ROM crystal), and the fact that free museums are, speaking from a landscape architect’s perspective, one of the few purely democratic public spaces in a city. Evidently I have enjoyed my “Museums and Society” course, and just as I have learned to really appreciate museums, I have to return to the land of admission fees. What an unfortunate irony. But no matter, I will still go knowing that at least my admission allows for the museums to keep running in the face of government cuts. Back to the Ashmolean though, I have found a few particularly favoured places within the massive expanse of galleries and none gives me more pleasure than the Chambers Hall Room. This room was the subject of one of my essays this semester, and I may have mentioned it before. I really only chose the room for the essay because it gave me an excuse to spend some more time sitting on a bench getting lost in the brushstrokes of Pissarro, Van Gogh, Monet and Renoir. I have found a similar room at the National Gallery in London full of even more exemplary pieces by the aforementioned artists as well as Sisley, Cezanne, and Degas, but it is far too crowded and noisy to really soak up a painting. The Chambers Hall Room gets sort of lost within the architecture of the museum and doesn’t get as much foot traffic as some of the others, and although its scope is not as great as the National Gallery, the room offers a much more personal connection to the art. Just as I am drawn to Blackwell’s every time I come downtown, so I am drawn to the room full of Impressionist art every time I come to the Ashmolean (which is nearly every time I’m downtown also).

I have discovered so much in my short time in this city laden with knowledge, and one of these discoveries – facilitated by the Ashmolean – is that I love Impressionist art. When I go to a gallery I like to look at things that are beautiful, yes, but also things that make me feel good. Some types of modern art are indeed very beautiful and striking, but I have encountered startlingly few that make me feel good when I look at them. I understand that that is the point of some of them. Modern art is often used to make us think, and make us uncomfortable, and send a message, and that’s fine. But I much prefer art that sends a nice message, art that captures the fleeting, luxurious, atmospheric qualities of the outdoor landscape. A rainy street in Paris, an apple orchard at dusk, or a windswept beach on a sunny Autumn day are all subjects that the Impressionists and I both find quite captivating. Those are the things I can look at for hours, and I think that should be the goal of artists. Not to create something offensive, and disturbing, but create something welcoming and uplifting. I feel a sort of spiritual connection to Impressionist art, it calms me. In many ways I feel the same thing when it comes to parks and gardens, they should be welcoming places that uplift and inspire people. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I identify so closely with both the subject and style of the Impressionists. Anyway, the point is that I have the Ashmolean to thank for this epiphany. Epiphanies are hard to avoid here.

3) The Green Places

Seeing as I’ve already unsurprisingly drifted toward parks and gardens, that may as well be the next thing on my list of favourites. Oxford boasts green spaces that would be, and probably are, the envy of much larger cities in England. Problematically, some of the areas of green space are on college properties which require payment to access (a foreign concept to me since Guelph’s fantastic Arboretum is free to the citizens of Guelph even though it is University land), but leaving that aside, most big green spaces are freely accessible. The University Botanic Gardens, thankfully free for me as a Brookes student, is another place that requires admission. The distinction between the two green spaces that require admission is that at the colleges, the cost is meant really as a deterrent for crowds of tourists bothering the students. They pass it off as “maintenance of the buildings” but I’m pretty sure tuition and corporate/government funding covers that pretty adequately. Let’s call a spade a spade Oxford, it’s because of the tourists. And really I can’t blame them. If I were studying in one of the colleges I would tire quickly of people snooping around and looking at their quadrangles full of boring, characterless, lifeless lawns. But we’ve been there and done that and I’m digressing again. The University Parks is a wonderful expanse of green on the edge of the city. There are immaculately groomed lawn tennis courts, cricket and football pitches and circuitous trails for walking and running engulfed by majestic old beeches and oaks. The entire thing is quite English looking. Green lawns, duck ponds, and prim and proper flowerbeds stuffed with fragrant viburnums and magnolias, tulips and daffodils, yews and hollies. 

As nice as the University Parks are, my favourite green place in Oxford is the University Botanic Garden. Especially at this warm, sunny time of year when the lawns are populated with loungers and the paths come alive with strolling horticulture connoisseurs. The place (as any good botanical garden ought to be) is an explosion of diverse and strange plant life. Colours abound regardless of season and it has been especially fun to visit it every week and see what is popping up and what is in bloom. In a way, it has become the substitute for my garden at home. My favourite feature is one that is not typical to the botanic garden archetype. Across one of the lawns at the back is a band of planting that looks markedly different from the surrounding borders. The soil is gravelly, there is a mesh fabric covering the ground, and the plants look robust and happy, but strangely foreign. And that’s because they are. It is a garden that has been designed around the future English climate if climate change continues as anticipated. Gone are the peonies and lupines and instead there are Mediterranean grasses, poppies, flax, and other drought tolerant species from southern Europe. The composition is quite striking and on one particularly warm day, I noticed that the new planting looked content and vigorous while the traditional borders (carefully irrigated with drip hoses) had already begun to wilt in the sun. This is obviously a crude example – one hot day does not global warming make – but the problem is that hot days are becoming the norm even in mild, damp England, and that is something that can’t be ignored, even in something as simple as designing a garden. Although it is depressing to see the huge change that may be coming in the world’s climate, illustrated starkly in the new border, it is encouraging to know that not only can we respond, but that the response can be beautiful too. I like this element of the botanical gardens, it pushes the envelope of the botanic garden archetype while at the same time providing the traditional, colourful joys of English horticulture. Basically I’m a sucker for plants, which is why, over the past few weeks, if the sky is clear, you would have found me among the flower beds and apple trees in Europe’s oldest university botanical garden.

4) The Pubs and Cafés

I wrote in the Yorkshire blog about the smaller the town the better the pub. This is for the most part completely true. The Green Dragon in Hardraw, the Lister Arms in Malham, and the Church House Inn in Torver in the Lake District are without doubt the most atmospheric and memorable dining/drinking establishments I have ever had the good fortune to discover. Cities have proven to offer a few decent pubs but most are of the chain variety and although they would be considered pretty nice places by Canadian pub standards, they are nothing compared to their counterparts in the countryside. However, I have found Oxford to be an exception to the rule. Though no pubs are quite as good as the three I’ve mentioned, Oxford’s pubs are very close and blow the pubs of London, York, etc. out of the water. This is partly aided by their history (it’s hard to dispute the merits of a pub that was favoured by the likes of Tolkein and C.S. Lewis among others), partly because Oxford is a town populated by students (who, even on a Monday night, don’t mind a pint or four), but even if you strip away the Oxford context they would be renowned institutions. The names alone make the pubs worth visiting. Names like “The Eagle and Child”, “The Angel and Greyhound”, “The Turf Tavern”, “The Cape of Good Hope”, and “The Lamb and Flag” are hard to resist. Turf Tavern, one of the most hidden of Oxford’s pubs, is one of my favourites. It is Oxford’s oldest pub, a Medieval building set next to a segment of the old city wall and tucked in among a crowd of other taller buildings, and is only reachable by narrow back alleys. There is a wonderful, hidden-treasure, sort of air about this pub and it is frequented mostly by students and the wise locals who know where to look. You’re more likely to overhear a discussion about Darwin or Jung or Quantum Theory between a few immaculately dressed students than you are to overhear a pair of Americans in “Oxford University” sweaters talking about which sites to see next. I like that a lot. Add the fact that the pub was a favourite of Bill Clinton when he studied in Oxford, and you have one of the best pubs in the city, which – as their slogan boasts – provides an “education in intoxication”. Other worthy places to be educated are the aforementioned pubs with fun names, as well as the intimate and atmospheric Half Moon pub on St Clement’s St. This became a popular place with us internationals, and this past Sunday’s live Irish folk music only reaffirmed this. The pub was filled to bursting (at one point we had to wait for our Guinnesses because they had run out of glasses) and in one corner was a circle of raggedy, folksy looking Brits singing, wouldn’t you know it, folk music. It was a wonderful mix of lively instrumental romps and quiet, crooning ballads. The bartenders made sure we were quiet for the songs, and everyone was respectful, with most chiming in at least for the chorus. We were such an enthusiastic bunch of backup vocalists that at the end of one song, one of the men singing acknowledged us with a smile, saying “well sung by the company!” It was a magical night, and another addition into the long list of perfect moments that seem to come along so freely in Oxford.

I will give a brief nod here to the cafés of Oxford, which hold their own quite well when compared to the pubs. The News Café, Heroes, and The Turl Street Kitchen are all excellent establishments although each are very different. But the real gem of the Oxford café scene is the Vaults and Gardens, a café inside the church of St Mary the Virgin. It is one great open room, with rows of old wooden tables and mismatched chairs arranged in a cafeteria style setup. Only this is no ordinary cafeteria. For one thing, the food is gourmet, locally sourced and very very tasty. The English breakfast at the Vaults and Gardens may be the best I’ve had, and that’s saying something. Another reason this isn’t your average everyday café, is that the room it occupies just so happens to be pushing 700 years old. The room was the Congregation House of the church and, according to the writing on the walls, dates from the 1320s. Welcome to Oxford. I’ve lived here for five months and I still can’t quite come to grips with the history of it all. A 700 year old building in Canada would be a National Historic Site, roped off, encased in glass, and requiring admission to get in. In Oxford it’s a café. Needless to say, once I discovered the Vaults and Gardens, which by some miracle was only about a month ago, I haven’t gone anywhere else when I am in need of tea, maybe some scones, and a newspaper to read.

5) The People

Of course I would be remiss if I did not briefly mention the great group of friends I have encountered. Clive Booth Hall has been populated with a rowdy, incredibly friendly, and genuinely good bunch of people. I now have contacts all over Europe, and have been told (in some cases ordered) that I am to come visit whenever I am in the neighbourhood. My roommates were all amazing, and we have already hatched a plan in which Devin and I (the North Americans) will fly to Madrid and find Victor before continuing as three on to Nice to find Ben and ending up in Milan with Pietro. I’m excited already.

I won’t say much more, because at this point I am starting to realize that it may be quite a long time before I see many of these great people again. Hopefully shorter rather than longer, but it’s a strange thing to say goodbye to someone and realistically not know when in the hell you may be reunited. I’m going to have to confront this again at graduation in Guelph, but until then let me live in blissful ignorance.

Oxford is a place with an uncanny ability to provide completely perfect moments. Some I have described in these blogs (listening to the fan-boys chanting vulgarities at the Oxford elites, or my encounter with the chatty Englishman near the river, for instance) but to be honest, there is usually a moment every time I am downtown where I am overcome with a feeling of complete and utter bliss. To describe them all would be exhausting, nearly impossible and would, I’m sure, inevitably reduce their magic. Just the other day I was wandering the botanical gardens and happened upon some fellow internationals from residence. As we sat and chatted on the lawn, sheltered from the brilliant sun by a small cherry tree, listening to the birds and the merrily ringing bells of Oxford’s various college chapels (which operate completely outside the conventional bell-ringing rules by chiming at odd intervals like, in this case, 5:23), it struck me just how frequent these great little moments are in this wonderful place.

And now, after happily distracting myself by recalling a few of my favourite things about this place, I should return to packing my bags as I prepare to leave it. You see, unlike the Sound of Music, this blog doesn’t have a totally happy ending. Also unlike the Sound of Music, there are no Nazis and I don’t have to flee the country. So there’s some consolation I suppose.

I may never again live as a resident of Oxford, but living here once has been every bit as magical as I had anticipated, and I don’t foresee the magic ever wearing off. And I know for certain, it will not be long before I’m back. I have been to some great places in England. The Lake District, Yorkshire, London, and others are all magnificent in their own respective ways, but the magnet that will pull me inevitably back to this little green island nation is the “City of Dreaming Spires” that I have had the privilege to call home for the past five months.