I stepped on a train at Moreton-in-March and it drove back through the Cotswolds into Oxfordshire and finally Oxford.

Just outside of Oxford station is a beautiful statue of a large, bronze bull or an Oxe, which was created by Olivia Musgrave, an Irish sculptor, to celebrate the opening of the Said Business School in 2001.

Walking from Oxford Railway Station towards the hostel at Central Backpackers I passed a  poster about female photographer Christina Broom…

I walked on to my hostel of Central Backpackers at Park End Street. After settling, I went into town and took a busride to Wolvercote, an Oxford suburb in the north, where I went to visit Wolvercote Cemetery…

Now everyone who knows The Wandelgek well, knows he’s a great fan of Children’s classics, Legends, Myths and Fairy Tales and from that background his interst in the work of J.R.R. Tolkien sparked.

Tolkien in my opinion wrote THE BEST book ever written when he wrote The Lord of the Rings. It is by far the most complex book ever including family trees, fully developed languages, extensive maps, chronologic time tables, poetry and songs, and most important a fully developed history behind the story. The history has an enormous depth because it has links to almost all important legends from north west Europe (Edda, Volsung Saga, Nibelungen Lied, Kalevala, Celtic legends, Karolingian sagas (e.g. that of Roland), Beowulf,, Arthurian legend and from the Classical (Greek and Roman) ages too.

And although I almost never search for graves of celebrities, I did make some exceptions on this journey. And thus I was en route towards the grave of J.R.R Tolkien, somewhere on Wolvercote Cemetry, to pay homage. This journey was of course tracking the backgrounds of classic children’s book authors, illustrators and characters from those books and therefore it is good to know that Tokien wrote several children’s books as well, like Farmer Giles of Ham, Mr. Bliss, Roverandom, The Father Christmas Letters, Smith of Wooton Mayor and of course an absolute classic: The Hobbit or There and back again…

The sign pointing towards his and his wifes grave reminded me of my visit back in 1992 to Jim Morrison’s grave at Père Lachaise graveyard in Paris…

And then I arrived at the grave of the author of which I have collected over 200 books!

I was not the 1st to arrive at his grave. On it were tokens of homage, worship and gratitude from all over the world,…

…like the coins left on the border of the grave which in old days were used to pay Charon (the ferryman) for save passage on his ferry when travelling to Hades underworld…

…but what I noticed most was of course the french language copy of Le Seigneur des Anneaux…

As I wrote before, Tolkien had invented a fully grown mythology for his world of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, which was published posthumously in 1977 by his son Christopher Tolkien. In this book, named The Silmarillion was a chapter telling us about the story of a mortal man named Beren and the love of his life, the immortal elvenking’s daughter Luthien Tinuviel. This story was the predecessor of the story of mortal Aragorn and immortal Arwen, which many of you know from Lord of the Rings. But less known was that Tolkien thought of himself as Beren and of his wife Edith as Luthien. Both those names were now beneath their everyday names engraved on the gravestone…

After a few moments of silence, I walked over the graveyard towards the exit.

It appeared that the graveyard had been chosen twice, in 1999 and in 2001 as Graveyard of the year.

I now returned by bus from Wolvercote towards the city center of Oxford. I decided to walk towards the Radcliffe Camera (the reading room of the Bodleian Library)…

These pics show the Radcliffe Camera left and All Souls College straight forward…

Another beautiful building on this square was the church of St. Mary the Virgin…

University Church of St Mary the Virgin

The University Church of St Mary the Virgin (St Mary’s or SMV for short) is an Oxford church situated on the north side of the High Street. It is the centre from which the University of Oxford grew and its parish consists almost exclusively of university and college buildings.

St Mary’s possesses an eccentric baroque porch, designed by Nicholas Stone, facing High Street, and a spire which is claimed by some church historians to be one of the most beautiful in England. Radcliffe Square lies to the north and to the east is Catte Street. The 13th-century tower is open to the public for a fee and provides good views across the heart of the historic university city, especially Radcliffe Square, the Radcliffe Camera, Brasenose College, Oxford and All Souls College.

I decided to go in. The interior of the church was quite impressive and I’m now talking about the wooden ceiling, saint statues and the stained  glass windows…

The church walls were full of beautiful artworks…

Paintings…

Statues…

Arcades…

Wood beamed ceiling…

Stained glass windows…

Stone sculpture decorations…

Look at those details…

Climbing the tower

But  despite all this magnificent art, there was actually another reason for The Wandelgek to visit this church and that reason was the view over Oxford from the tower…

Clore Old Library

Climbing the stairs The Wandelgek passed the Clore Old Library. The Old Library of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin was built in 1320 and is the first university (as opposed to college) building in Oxford. It is where the nascent university began. By the early 13th century, Oxford was firmly established as an academic centre, drawing students from across Europe, undergraduates and masters, such as the Clerk of Oxenford in the Canterbury Tales, living in houses and halls. The growing university had no buildings of its own, so it adopted St Mary’s as its administrative centre and built a two-storey building, east of the tower, facing onto what is now Radcliffe Square.

The upper room became the first university library and contained a small number of books chained to desks. The books were moved to the Duke Humfrey’s Library in the Bodleian (which The Wandelgek visited and described in an earlier Oxford blog) in 1450 as part of its founding collection. The roof and floors of the library are now its oldest parts: both date from 1509.

Then The Wandelgek reached a midway gallery around the tower and it was an awesome place full of Gargoyle like creatures…

And the there was the unbelievable view over Oxford…

…and more gargoyles…

In a medieval society humans suffered and worked and the human faces and bodies shown here did suffer and work very hard…

The Wandelgek climbed the stairs to the top of the tower from where the views were even more spectacular…

Above the All Souls College and beneath the Radcliffe Camera (right) and Brasenose College (left)…

Above Brasenose, beneath All Souls…

A great view over Highstreet with the tower of Magdalen College…

Photography tip:

And another awesome view over All Souls College. The bright sun coming from behind the tower causes the college to be a bit overexposed.

I overcame that problem by using my flashlight and a shorter exposure. This darkens the overall image and would have made The Wandelgek into a dark silhouette, but the flash compensates for that. The flash is not strong enough to reach All Souls (not in a long shot) and thus the pic becomes a lot better.

The spires of Oxford

Some spectacular impressions of Oxford from above…

Above is a view on the gate of Oriel College at the other side of High Street…

Gargoyles transport rain…

Shops  on High Street…

This view is towards the green lands that border Oxford…

Awesome view on the way down…

…and more Gargoyles…

A great view on the Radcliffe Camera…

Some last views over the spires of Oxford…

The dome of the Sheldonean Theater…

These were the stairs up and down the tower of St. Mary the Virgin Church…

 

Descending the last meters…

…and then leaving the church.

The Wandelgek walked right around the Radcliffe Camera towards Catte Street…

…At Catte Street I passed underneath the beautiful Bridge of Sighs..

A few meters beyond the Bridge of Sighs is a narrow alley to the left, leading towards Turf Tavern (see my earlier blog on Oxford). But for now I decided to keep following Catte Street…

…and after a few turns in this narrow street I reached two old gates, one straight forward and one on the right…

I loved the statues above the gate straight forward.

The Wandelgek turned left through the gate into Queen’s Lane and walked on passed All Souls College towards Queen’s College…

…tot St. Edward Hall and its beautiful green garden…

After this small walk I decided to walk to the end of Queen’s Lane to High Street and then to the left, back to the Radcliffe Camera…

Again I turned into Catte Street but now I went immediately left through Helen’s Passage to the 12th Century Turf Tavern…

Following Morse

I now decided to go on a pub crawl following famous Inspector Morse and sidekick Lewis…

The Wandelgek followed St Helen’s Passage towards the Turf Tavern and ordered a pint of red ale and some buns with pulled pork and beef at the bar …

It had actually been the hottest day of this stay in England and the night promised to be really warm moist and hot too. I ate my diner outdoors on the terrace of this really old Inn.

At nightfall The Wandelgek walked towards Bath Place which again was through very narrow corridors towards the 17th century Bath Place Hotel…

A narrow corridor through Bath Place Hotel led towards Holywell Street, where he turned left towards the King’s Arms, another pub frequently visited by Morse and Lewis…

It was quite late now and several pubs were closing. The King’s Arms shut its doors and I went searching for another pub and found again a pub visited by Morse named the White Horse, but it seemed quite empty and also ready to close its doors, so I decided to skip this one…

Harry Potter commerce in Oxford

I thaught of going to my bunk bed at the hostel and walked passed the Flaggs College Store on Broad Street.

There are several college stores in Oxford and they supply students of the differen colleges with uniforms and other school necessities. But this college store (and some others too) had quite a nice collection of Harry Potter goods behind the store windows. I saw school uniforms, paintings, Dobby, the Marauders Map, the Gryffon  which was positioned at the stairs leading to Dumbledore’s office, and more…

Ah and there we even have Gollem 🙂

Ah yes and drawings of the Mad Hatter :-D. Oxford makes clever use of the popularity of the Children’s Classics that were born or made use of Oxford. Something where Canterbury could learn from. I really didn’t find any Rupert related store in Canterbury.

I walked back to my hostel and was almost ready to go to bed when I noticed I didn’t want to. ??? Why was that?!? Well it was still very moist and warm and there was quite some noise and music coming from the open window. I decided to dress and go to a pub near the hostel which I had passed 10 minutes ago and which still looked quite lively. And it was. This pub was open very late. I ordered some pints of Goblin Red Ale and a Guinness and spent the beginning of night here. I noticed the drawing on the wall of the Kraken, a sea monster which I knew from Pirates of the Carribean…

 

In the end beven this pubhad to shut its doors and I returned to my bunk bed for my last night in Oxford. Temperatures were bareable now and I slept well 🙂