In which I visit a university town and a seaside port.

One of the best parts of being in Nottingham has to be the location. Nottingham is in the Midlands, so more or less in the middle of England which means that most towns are pretty easy to visit just for a daytrip. And also conveniently there are lots and lots of University-run groups organising said daytrips meaning low costs and an enjoyable lack of self-responsibility. Instead of having to decide which towns to visit, and when, I just wait until an event pops up on Facebook, and off I go. This means in the past couple of weekends I got to visit a couple of towns which hadn't really been on my radar of must-see places, but which were definitely worth the trip. 

First up, Oxford. Oxford is probably most well known for the university, but given that New Zealand universities aren't exactly major tourist attractions it hadn't really struck me as a visiting destination. Once I heard that Oxford was the home of Alice and Wonderland, and that parts of Harry Potter were filmed at one of the colleges I was sold. It was also interesting to see given that I had recently visited Cambridge, home to the UK's other most famous university, offering a good comparison. Oxford felt very much like a tourist destination, which an abundance of shops selling Oxford sweaters and Union Jack tshirts, and no shortage of (very pricey) attractions to visit. Personally I feel like I wouldn't enjoy studying a town which was always packed with visitors and tourist busses, but I guess that's the price you pay to attend a presitigous and famous university. 

Upon arriving in Oxford we decided to explore some of the town before seeing one of the university's famous colleges. We saw some famous buildings, including the Radcliffe Camera and Bodilean Library, which were both very impressive. I would have loved to explore the library inside, but unfortunately you had to accompany a tour which of course meant spending far too much money. Instead we headed to the Ashmolean Museum, a museum of art and archeaology. It was a somewhat strange museum because it had a lot of displays, but many of them were replicas and casts of famous archealogical finds, so one could never be quite sure without reading up close whether something was genuine or just a copy. Still, it was a good way to spend the morning as we were waiting for the chance to visit Christ Church (one of Oxford's colleges), which wasn't open until the afternoon. 

Christ Church was home to the Lewis Carroll and, more importantly, its dining hall was used for filming in the first Harry Potter film. This was apparently a very big draw card as we spent a good 5-10 minutes just walking slowly in a queue from one end of the hall to the other. Apart from the dining hall we also got to see some of the grounds (although most was closed to visitors), and the chapel, which actually functions as the cathedral for the diocese of Oxford. Needless to say I was pretty impressed by the college, which was a far cry from the accommodation back home. After our visit we headed across to the road to the "Alice Shop", apparently the actual shop upon which Lewis Carroll based the Old Sheep Shop in Through the Looking Glass. It was a tiny shop filled with so much Alice in Wonderland memorabilia. I wanted to buy the whole shop basically, especially the tea sets. By this time we were exhausted, but still had a couple of hours before our coach pick-up, so we checked out the outside of the remains of Oxford Castle, and then headed to a pub for traditional fish and chips and a drink to round off a long day.

The following weekend I took a trip to another very popular destination, the seaside town of Whitby. As anyone from Samuel Marsden would know, I found this particularly funny because our high school bought and integrated an independent school from the suburb of Whitby in Wellington, so I spent the whole trip making Marsden Whitby jokes which absolutely no one understand. Aside from that, I actually really loved the town and the seaside ambience.

We first walked up to Whitby Abbey (which can be seen up on the hill in the photo). We had a great view of the town from the top of the hill. We took a tour of the Abbey remains, which included an audio tour. I've never actually used an audio tour before, and it was actually quite cool, because you could just wander around the abbey exploring while taking in information, rather than just reading a sign. It was also quite cheesey because the tour seemed really geared towards children, so there were lots of really bad reenactments from "historical figures", but this just ended up being pretty funny. They'd also chosen a really weird focus to capture the children's attention, in the form of executions. There were all these cardboard cutout figures of cartoons being executed around the abbey remains, and we were even informed that we could meet the "executioner" on our tour. Somehow this seemed very odd against the backdrop of this historic religious building. In any case, the remains themselves were magnificent, and it was only a shame that we couldn't have seen the whole abbey when it was in its full glory.

  The only downside to being at the top of the hill was the wind which was especially blustery and cold, so we didn't stick around for too long. We did explore the Church of St Mary and neighbouring graveyard which were also at the top of the hill, before heading back down to the town. The town itself was actually a lot more bustling than I expected, with a lot of shops for everything from fancy plates to jewellry to sweaters. And there was a neverending abundance of ice cream and sweet shops. I was surprised by how many people were actually eating ice cream, given that it was very cold and very windy and not at all cold food weather, but I suppose it was appropriate for the location. We opted instead to get fish and chips from the Magpie Cafe (recommended to us by basically everyone). The advice was good, and we enjoyed some delicious fish and chips while sitting on the pier. I do have to say that the chips in England are always much soggier than NZ, which is a let down, but the fish was great, and clearly fresh. I also very much approve of the addition of vinegar. In order to work off the very filling fish and chips we walked up another hill which had a statue of Captain Cook, and looked out across the town from the opposite side to the abbey.

On our walk back towards the coach stop we thought we would check out one of the "family amusement centres". Basically a whole section of the street leading down to the pier was filled with those arcades with different games like Timezone in Wellington, all with lots of flashing lights and fun for all the family advertised. It actually turned out to be super creepy, with all these really stupid penny games where you just keep sticking pennies into slots with the eventual (but unlikely) hope that you will win a tacky prize. And it was all lone adults, who were clearly there for the gambling rather than the family fun. 0/10 would not recommend for future visitors.

In any case, I definitely enjoyed everything else about Whitby. It really felt like the kind of place that would be nice for a whole weekend getaway, especially in the summer when you could really enjoy the actual beach aspect. I still have a few day trips planned for the next couple of weeks, so I will try to keep this updated.

Byeeeeee!