On Saturday morning (June 18), after having another huge English breakfast and checking out of the hotel, we returned to Tim and Rosemary's to spend time with them as well as their daughter Helen, who had come to visit for the weekend.
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| Rosemary, Helen, Katya, Matthew, Tim and Peter |
The four of us plus Helen (after a cup of tea, which can be and is offered at any time) took a bus into downtown Oxford to explore. We walked along the Broad, strolled through the covered market, peeked into the green courtyards of various colleges, and stopped to admire the Radcliffe Camera and the Bodleian Library from the outside.
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| Radcliffe Camera, Oxford |
We ended up at Magdelan Bridge over the Thames, where we rented a punt for an hour. The streets of Oxford as well as the river were full of revelers as the term had just ended. After getting away from the dock, which was the greatest challenge since punts were going in all directions, we floated along on a fairly regular course. Peter was in charge most of the time, but Matthew also gave maneuvering the boat a go and did not do badly. At least neither he not Peter fell in.
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| Matthew and Helen with Peter punting on the Thames |
Despite the amount of food we consumed in the morning, we were quite hungry by the time we got around to having lunch in the mid-afternoon. We chose the Eagle and Child on St. Giles Street as it was the gathering place for the Inklings, a group of writers who included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. We sat at a varnished wooden table beneath photos and a signed document commemorating a toast that the Inklings made in the 1950's.
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| Matthew enjoyed a beer in front of photo of Tolkien at the Eagle and Child pub |
Returning with Helen to Tim and Rosemary's home, we enjoyed another cup of tea and then departed for Wiltshire, where we had plans to spend the night with Peter and Sarah McCluskie at their lovely home in the Old Rectory at Winterbourne Bassett. Peter and Peter have known each other since the late 1970's, when they were part of a group led by Andrew della Casa who set off on an expedition across the Sahara through Algeria, Libya, Sudan and Egypt--and made it! The trip is legendary among the group members and their families at least.
Peter and Sarah showed us the old church of St. Katherine and St. Peter by their house, a place where, it was recently discovered, pilgrims stopped and left markings on their way to the Avebury Stone Circle and by ship from Bristol to travel the Camino de Santiago in Spain. At the time of these pilgrimages, churches had dirt floors and were overnight refuges for those unable to pay for lodging.
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| Pilgrim markings at the church of St. Katherine and St. Peter |
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| Church of St. Katherine and St. Peter in Winterbourne Bassett |
We enjoyed tea around a cozy fire--yes, a fire for warmth in mid-June!--before sitting down together, along with their youngest daughter Millie and a friend of hers from Pembrook College, Oxford, for a fantastic meal of vegetarian curry and naan. Most of the evening was spent with Peter and Peter reminiscing about the great Sahara expedition. Peter M. pulled out a file he had kept with fund-raising documents, receipts, minutes of planning meetings and photos as well as a cassette tape containing a recording of an interview three of the expedition members had done on the BBC before the trip. (It was hilarious, revealing the naivity of youth! We had to listen to it twice.)
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Sarah, Matthew, Katya, Hector, Peter and Peter
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In the morning, after breakfast, we repacked the car and said goodbye as we set off for our next social engagement, lunch with Andrew della Casa and his family at their weekend home in the beautiful green rolling hills of the Cotswolds. Their house is in a lovely rural setting, nestled amidst 3500 acres of fields and woods used for partridge and pheasant hunting.
More later! Off to see the sights around Glasgow.
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