London day trip: Oxford

by Sean McLachlan on


London is one of the most popular destinations in Europe because of its eclectic shopping, crazy nightlife, and world-class museums and galleries. It can get a bit tiring and stressful, though. For those who want to get out of the Smoke and see a bit more of England, Oxford makes an easy and enjoyable day trip.

Getting there
The best way to get to Oxford from London is the Oxford Tube, which has regular bus service from various points in London up to four times an hour. There’s train service from Paddington station too, although it’s more expensive. There are also direct buses from Heathrow and Gatwick airports.

What to see
Oxford is famous for its university, one of the oldest in Europe. The Gothic and Victorian architecture of its more than two dozen colleges give Oxford much of its charm. Most are open to the public and feature beautiful quads with ivy-covered walls, and medieval chapels with stained glass and soaring roofs. Be sure to take a guided tour of the Bodleian Library, one of the largest in the world and home to some ornate medieval interiors. In the photo above courtesy Tejvanphotos, you can see the ornate Radcliffe Camera, one of the library buildings where I do research in the summer. If you see a guy in a Gadling t-shirt buried in a pile of books on medieval history, take him out for a pint.

Being a seat of learning, Oxford also has several good museums. Three of the best are the Pitt-Rivers for its ethnographic collection, the Ashmolean for its ancient artifacts, and the Museum of the History of Science. The River Thames passes through town and is locally called the Isis. There’s a pleasant riverside walk you can do, or you can strike out on the water by going punting. The best way to get orientated to Oxford is to go on one of the many tours. There are regular walking tours, bicycle tours, charity fundraising tours run by Oxfam, and ghost tours.

%Gallery-131760%Eating and Drinking
Oxford is filled with restaurants, many of them rather disappointing. Here are some of the better ones. The Grand Cafe is on the site of England’s first coffeehouse, built in 1650. Today it serves Continental cuisine in a refined atmosphere. The Vaults and Garden Cafe under the Church of St. Mary serves up healthy food and good coffee under the medieval vaults that give it its name. Chiang Mai Kitchen serves excellent Thai food. High tea at the Randolph Hotel is an Oxford tradition. For a more diverse selection, head down Cowley Road for a variety of Arab, Indian, Caribbean, and Slavic restaurants.

If you like English pubs, you’ll feel right at home here. The White Horse on Broad Street is popular with visitors as well as scholars who flee the Bodleian for a mid-afternoon pint. The Turf just off Queen’s Lane is another popular spot and has outside seating. The Eagle and Child on Saint Giles is famous for being the drinking spot of the Inklings, a writers’ group that included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

Hiking
Oxford makes a great base for hikes to nearby villages and ancient monuments. You can walk along the Thames Path to Abingdon, visit the Rollright Stones (a stone circle), see a folly, and hike England’s oldest road–the Ridgeway.

Staying Overnight
With so much to do, you might want to stay overnight. Unfortunately Oxford is filled with mediocre or just plain bad B&Bs and hotels, and they’re all overpriced. I’ve found only two I would recommend. The Ethos Hotel is in a quiet residential neighborhood and an easy walk into town. Some rooms come with a kitchenette so you can stock up food and save a bit of money. The Mercure Oxford Eastgate Hotel is utterly lacking in atmosphere but it’s right in the middle of the action on High Street. Living on a writer’s wages I’ve not tried the luxurious Randolph but I’ve heard it’s pretty good.

When to go
If at all possible avoid going in the summer, when Oxford is crammed with tourists and English-language students. The autumn is nice with the ivy changing color, and the spring is fine too. Winter isn’t as bad as you might think. Yes, it’s gold and gray, but the university hosts a lot of cultural life such as concerts and lectures during term time.

United Kingdom: 3G service survey crowdsourced

by Alex Robertson Textor on

This morning, the BBC released a survey regarding the reach of 3G service across the United Kingdom. The BBC obtained its data the newfangled way, via crowdsourcing. In July, almost 45,000 people downloaded an Android app that allowed their mobile phones to be tracked for the survey.

And the outcome of the survey? The BBC found that about three-quarters of the time people in the UK appear to be able to access 3G coverage, though “notspots” (where users can access much slower 2G service) exist in many places. These notspots include a surprising number of areas within central London. There are also wide swaths of the country where no data came back from the crowdsourcing phone users.

The BBC’s multimedia survey allows readers to check coverage in their home postcodes. I found my own postcode (E2) to be generally well blanketed with 3G coverage, though not without its 3G-lacking pieces of the map.

The survey also points out that the country’s roads and railways are also undersaturated, with notably bad service along some heavily-used highways and train routes.

The BBC mentions the research of a startup called OpenSignalMaps, which has carried out a similar survey. OpenSignalMaps found that 3G is accessed just 58 percent of the time by users in the UK; furthermore, they have located 22,000 mostly rural places in the UK with no 3G service. Gwynedd in north Wales and Cumbria in northwest England are especially lacking in 3G service.

[Image: Flickr | William Hook]

London: A nontraditional tea

by Alex Robertson Textor on

High teas loom large in the fantasies of many tourists. How is it possible, I was wondering to myself earlier this month, that the only teas I’d enjoyed since moving to London in January were simple cream teas at various country pubs and inns? Most of these cream teas were notably lovely, with scones slathered in double or clotted cream the main event in each case.

But a blow-out high tea had evaded me.

I recently remedied the situation, though in a distinctly nontraditional way, by sampling the Gentlemen’s Afternoon Tea at the Sanctum Soho Hotel in London. Begun in late 2010, the Gentlemen’s Tea turns the typical high tea on its head. The starring item is the tray of three types of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, served with pewter tankards for sipping and a small ice bucket. The three types of whiskey, each of which I naturally felt compelled to sample, include the basic Jack, the flavorful Single Barrel, and the twice charcoal-mellowed Gentleman Jack.

There were other nice things on the menu, all vaguely masculine. There are starches and a lot of meat, with no raw vegetables in sight. Highlights include a fat poached oyster slathered in a sweet relish, seared steak on toasted sourdough, and a Yorkshire pudding stuffed with roast beef and horseradish. All are diminutive three-bite numbers save the gargantuan lamb and potato hotpot, which could do duty as a main course.

Tea (not an afterthought, really!) followed the parade of nibbles and liquor. And then came a cigar as the final “course.” A waitress asked if we’d like to be accompanied to the rooftop to enjoy our cigars.

The tagline of the tea is “The Ultimate Indulgence” and at £50 ($82.50) per person, it is certainly a self-indulgent little escapade.

Other nontraditional teas in London include the Mandeville Hotel’s Men’s and gluten-free afternoon teas, and TeaSmith‘s afternoon TeaSmithCeremony, which pairs teas with various pastries and chocolates.

The author was a guest of Sanctum Soho for the Gentlemen’s Afternoon Tea.

[Image: Flickr | cookbookman17]

England riots: watching Basket Case 2 and waiting for Oxford to burn

by Sean McLachlan on

The night before last, I walked into my local convenience store here in Oxford and the pothead manager told me, “Be glad you don’t have to stay here all night.”

“Expecting trouble?” I asked.

“You haven’t heard the news? It’s all over Twitter. They’re going to gather in five different locations and then attack the city center.”

I considered for a moment. The store, and my house, are on the south end of Iffley Road. It’s a nice neighborhood, but just south of it is Rose Hill, full of yobs and hoodies, just the kind of snaggle-toothed lowlifes who’ve been rioting in London and other English cities. I pictured a mob of them swarming down from Rose Hill, burning the nineteenth-century thatched roof houses in Iffley village (including my son’s school), spray painting the Norman church, and charging up Iffley Road in a lager-fueled fury.

They’d hit the store first, beating up the night manager and stealing his weed along with the liquor behind the counter. Refreshed, they’d head up Iffley Road towards city center. Right by my house.

I finished shopping and hurried home. There had already been incidents in nearby towns. A McDonalds set on fire. Shop windows smashed. When I got home my kid said that when he was coming back from day camp he’d seen a lot of police. Even a five-year-old knew something was up.

His bedroom faces the street. I pictured a brick flying through shattered glass. That happened to a friend of mine in London, and it wasn’t even during the riots. I moved him into the back room with his mother. I took the front room.

They soon went to bed. I texted some friends who live in Rose Hill, hardworking immigrants who work overtime to provide a good education for their kids. They didn’t reply. I constantly checked the Thames Valley Police Twitter feed, which said all was quiet but that there were increased patrols. I saw none from my window.

I needed to take my mind off my worries and nothing does that better than a B-movie. Lately I’ve been feeling nostalgic for New York City. Not today’s Disney New York of tourists and yuppies, but the gritty and vibrant 1980s New York of my teens. Besides Driller Killer, no B-movie captures the essence of the old New York better than Basket Case.This tarnished gem features conjoined twins: a regular teenager who looks a bit like I did at that age, and a shrunken lump sticking out his side. They’re separated with an operation, but of course they have a telepathic bond and the lump likes to kill people. The normal brother keeps the evil football-with-claws in a basket, hence the movie’s name. I’d seen Basket Case, so I put on Basket Case 2, which had to be better than the original, right?

In the sequel our “heroes” takes refuge in a mansion run by a mad psychologist who shelters mutants. The house is filled with them. In the first therapy session, the shrink tells the basket case, “I understand your pain, but ripping the faces off people might not be in your best interest.” Somebody should tell the rioters that.

The movie seemed to be taking an interesting turn. I kind of felt sorry for the monster. It never had a chance. I definitely felt sorry for his normal-looking brother, trapped into a lonely and fugitive life because of his evil other half. I soon lost all sympathy. Any regular people who enter the house of freaks are immediately attacked, and the freaks corrupt the normal teen until he’s as evil as themselves. The injustices of the world weren’t making the mutants do bad things, they just used that as an excuse.

I worry about my friends’ kids up in Rose Hill. Surrounded as they are by lager-swilling dropouts waiting to turn 18 so they can get onto the dole like their parents and grandparents, they’re going to have a huge challenge growing up clean. Decent folk in bad neighborhoods face a stark choice: be a victim, get out, or become one of the monsters.

The night passed quietly. The next morning the paper said several fires had been set across Oxford. None were serious. In one case a would-be arsonist stuck a rag into a car’s fuel tank and set the rag alight but somehow the fire didn’t spread. These guys aren’t exactly rocket scientists. I suppose the cops didn’t report the fires on their Twitter feed for fear of encouraging copycat crimes. Makes sense from a policing point of view, but from a taxpayer’s point of view I wasn’t pleased.

The next night I went to the Albion Beatnik, Oxford’s best independent bookshop. There was a reading sponsored by eight cuts gallery, a local small press, and unlike so many literary readings most of the stuff was actually good. This is the England I love, the England of intellect and wit, of culture and community. The England of the rioters is a different country occupying the same space. Shangra-La and Somalia.

I left early to make it back before dark. The city at dusk was quiet. Several times people moved out of my way. Two girls even crossed the street. A lone man is suspect. Once again I slept in my son’s bed in the front room. No bricks this night either, but at 5:30 in the morning I got woken up a hollow thump thump thump. It continued for at least ten minutes, punctuated by incoherent bellowing.

I peeked out the window. A young drunk guy in a hooded sweatshirt was kicking the plastic recycling bins and calling for his friend to let him in. Eventually he realized he had the wrong house and staggered off down the street. He wasn’t going to make it far. I pictured him curling up on the sidewalk and dozing off, oblivious to the early morning pedestrians stepping around him. You see that a lot in England.

As I got back into bed it started to rain. I thought of him asleep out there and smiled.

London considering “floating hotels” to accommodate visitors to 2012 Olympics

by Melanie Renzulli on

Although London is expecting close to 5.5 million visitors for the 2012 Olympics, the city only has around 120,000 hotel rooms. Given these numbers, Olympics organizers are considering setting up floating hotels – “flotels” or “floatels” – on the River Thames for the duration of the three-week event.

Organizers are considering inviting up to three cruise ships to dock about three miles from the Olympic Park in Stratford in order to cope with the high demand for hotel rooms. London also plans to lease docking berths to yacht owners for £150,000. Of course, this is a fantastic way for the city to make money during the games, but does not solve the problem for average spectators who wish to find a room at a reasonable rate. The Daily Mail estimates that visitors to London during the Olympics can expect a tenfold increase in the regular accommodations rates. No word yet on rates for a floating hotel room, but you can probably expect your bank account to be stripped of a substantial amount of gold, silver, and bronze.

[Photo credit: Flickr user robmcm]