Oxford

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

HI

I've just bought a ticket to Oxford for next week, because like my Nottingham jaunt last week, I do like visiting cities for no reason. Cause it's fun and I am a tit with disposable income.

So, like my no effort thread from last month, what do I go and do? Help please, I know a bunch of people here live there so there's plenty of advice to be around from various quarters. I will be there from 12 until quarter to 6-ish when I need to get my train (at 7).

Thanks for reading,
Angrew

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Dream, gawp, drink.

[Steven]

Go to my previous address 13 Walton Well Road.

Install Blue Plaque.

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

For what it's worth, I am of Cambridge so have seen the other half of the uni twat posh city realm.

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

PANCREAS

[pancreas]

Ah, the X5, I assume? Or 'misery bus' as I like to call it. The best bit is when you stop for 20 minutes at Bedford bus station and watch people tottering about with enormous plastic bags full of yet more plastic.

There's a new, very cheap Thai caff in the covered market. The food is hot and cheap and ought to be right up your alley. Other than that, go to evensong in one of the college chapels for free. I recommend New College.

Should probably visit the Turf pub also.

Punting on the Cherwell?

[pancreas]

Take a friend to Thirsty Meeples and play a board game. Maybe kittens can join you.

[pancreas]

Oh of course the Pitt Rivers is a must, with the Ashmolean if you're not museumed out. Hang on, didn't we do all this for kittens?

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

Ah, the X5, I assume? Or 'misery bus' as I like to call it. The best bit is when you stop for 20 minutes at Bedford bus station and watch people tottering about with enormous plastic bags full of yet more plastic.

There's a new, very cheap Thai caff in the covered market. The food is hot and cheap and ought to be right up your alley. Other than that, go to evensong in one of the college chapels for free. I recommend New College.

Should probably visit the Turf pub also.

Punting on the Cherwell?

Not doing the X5 cause even going to Bedford made me want to hit people (the eventual town was a unique spot of southern misery save for a fairly decent park.). Had to do the via London trains - 28 quid seems like a decent price to pay for half the travelling time.

Seriously though, don't go to Bedford. I got lured into this museum about some weird Christian cult and their 'castle' isn't even real, it's just a lump of mud.

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

I lived in Oxford for 6 months and found it to be deeply unimpressive with regards to nightlife and general liveliness. Cowley road had a bit about it but I found the place to be desperately dull considering the size of the student population and by fuck was it expensive.

[Danger Man]

Ashmolean: Shittest museum I've ever been in.

That pub were Tolkein and CS Lewis used to drink. Shit.


Awful place.

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

Thanks for the positivity guys.

I think we can agree that Bedford is a fairly misery-inducing place though right?

Also Pancs, if you've presumably done the full X5 bus route could you tell me what it was like spending over half an hour travelling through Milton Keynes? Did any of your fellow travelers suffer as a result?

[Steven]

That pub were Tolkein and CS Lewis used to drink. Shit.

Eagle and Child, lived there for years but only had a pint in there once, it is shit. But it was fun to see Elijah Wood sit in the exact place I sat in that Oxford Murders film, if only I hadn't moved.

It was also meta because he's Frodo etc, ah, do you see?

[Danger Man]

[pancreas]

Also Pancs, if you've presumably done the full X5 bus route could you tell me what it was like spending over half an hour travelling through Milton Keynes? Did any of your fellow travelers suffer as a result?

We always lost a few. You can learn to live with the pain eventually, but you can never really forget.

[shiftwork2]

Least impressive train station of any major town in Britain.  Uncanny valley sort of place, not quite real.  Had my only road accident there with some be-blazered herbert in an MX-5.

Have a belter Angrew!

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Eagle & Child does look mediocre, whatever charm it may have once possessed certainly isn't there now, and pubs of that kind who try and transplant historical coincidences or trivia onto present day experience in order to bolster their appeal always fail when the place itself now looks the same as any other fucking dive or beige dining room.

[manticore]

Oh of course the Pitt Rivers is a must, with the Ashmolean if you're not museumed out. Hang on, didn't we do all this for kittens?

I still maintain that kittens didn't go to the Pitt Rivers and was telling a lie when he said he did and it was 'fine'. 'Fine'? Still rankles a bit with me, that. I lived in Oxford longer than anyone else here so my advice is expert and it is to go to the Pitt Rivers because it's unique in the world and any other time could be spent at Magdalen College. Places like the Cowley Road Triangle need to be lived in, not visited.

Oxford is a great place in many ways, 27 times better than Bedford, where I've also lived. Bill Bryson said Oxford's an ugly place with beautiful buildings in it, which is true.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Bill Bryson said Oxford's an ugly place with beautiful buildings in it, which is true.

That's already twice as good as most American cities.

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

I maintain that Birmingham's a shit place with good people in it. I guess most places need that balance between beauty and non-twat-populatedness.

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

The thing with Oxford is that people arrive there with a preconception that it's some kind of beautiful special town with gleaming spires and a bohemian populace when in fact it's just a deeply ordinary town near the midlands with some nice buildings and plenty of fucking ugly ones in the centre.

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

The thing with Oxford is that people arrive there with a preconception that it's some kind of beautiful special town with gleaming spires and a bohemian populace when in fact it's just a deeply ordinary town near the midlands with some nice buildings and plenty of fucking ugly ones in the centre.

Look pal, Cambridge is exactly the same. I'm only going to Oxford so see how exactly the same it is.

[manticore]

Look pal, Cambridge is exactly the same. I'm only going to Oxford so see how exactly the same it is.

I know all about this because I grew up in Cambridge, then went to York and then Oxford. As a place, York is the most beautiful, so beautiful it made my Canadian friend cry when I took her there. Cambridge is second best, but it's changed and become more of an impersonal silicon fen city than the nice market town it still was in the 70s. Oxford has been ugly for quite a while due to the policies of The Council and commerce and all the bloody cars everywhere.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

https://www.oxford.gov.uk/info/20216/air_quality_management/1227/oxford_zero_emission_zone_zez

They seem to be making some efforts to address this.

[The Boston Crab]

Oxford, Gloxford,
Runcible egg.

[Emma Raducanu]

Reminds me, who was the VW who travelled on every bus route in London for a year?

[Cuellar]

Go to the new Westgate shopping centre. Only thing worth seeing/doing really.

[manticore]

https://www.oxford.gov.uk/info/20216/air_quality_management/1227/oxford_zero_emission_zone_zez

They seem to be making some efforts to address this.

The proposal would see diesel and petrol vehicles banned from Oxford city centre in phases, starting with some vehicle types and a small number of streets in 2020, and - as vehicle technology develops - moving to all vehicle types across the whole city centre in 2035.

Oxford city centre currently has illegally-high levels of toxic nitrogen dioxide, which contributes to diseases including cancer, asthma, stroke and heart disease - and contributes to around 40,000 deaths in the UK every year.

Very happy to hear about this, almost makes me want to move back.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yes it's always great when councils decide to tackle transport problems by artificially making the competition worse.

[manticore]

Yes it's always great when councils decide to tackle transport problems by artificially making the competition worse.

Oh, it seems that I'm not understanding something. A little explanation please?