Two Bears in Oxford

It is a dull, drizzly afternoon but I am not sad, because I am on a little holiday with five of my Bear buddies.  We are staying with our human guardians in a hotel near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, on the way to visit Grandad Polar for Christmas.

Polar and Grizzly had a short holiday in Oxford during October, with Grizzly's son, Mr George.  Because they were travelling by train and Polar was taking her big camera, and she had to go to a meeting in Birmingham on the way, she said we couldn't take a big Bear Bag with us, but there should be room for one bear to travel with her and one with Grizzly.

 

I went with Polar to her meeting in Birmingham, which was on the 19th floor of a big office block.  I was scared, as I have never been so far off the ground, but Polar gave me hugs and said we were quite safe, and showed me some of the places we had visited when we came to Birmingham on our boat.  We could also see where the new railway station for HS2 is being built.

 

Hanley had travelled on to Oxford with Grizzly and they met Mr George and had some lunch while we were on the train to join them.  When we arrived, Grizzly got us all tickets for the city tour bus and, because it was a bright, sunny day, we sat up on the open top deck.

 

We got some really great views of Oxford, which has a castle, a cathedral and lots of University colleges, and the tour guide told us what we were looking at.  Polar, Grizzly and Mr George made a plan of what they were going to visit the next day and also picked out somewhere to have their evening meal, before we all got off the bus and went to explore on foot.

Our human guardians did a lot of walking that afternoon, as well as getting back on the buses, but we were able to sit in Polar's big bag as she had her camera on a strap around her neck.  We had a very nice dinner, then went back to our hotel.  While our humans were getting unpacked, we found the biscuits and had another snack!

The next morning, after a really nice breakfast, the humans set off with us on another long walk, this time going into Oxford via the Thames Path and Christ Church Meadows.  Our hotel was right next to the river and we bears were thrilled to see lots of narrow boats on it.

 

"They must be proper Gyptian boats," said Hanley, who is a great fan of the Gyptians in Mr Philip Pullman's books and likes them almost as much as the Armoured Bears.   "But I thought the Thames would be bigger than this?"

I explained to Hanley that the Thames is a much smaller river here than when it reaches London.  There was a map by one of the locks and I could show him where Sonning was - or "You Town" as he calls it.

 

It was a long way along the river to the meadows and then a long walk across those back to the city centre, so we asked to go in Polar's bag again for most of the way.  She didn't mind, because she was using her camera again and there was plenty of space for us both, although we did get out sometimes to do some running or to climb on logs.

 

We arrived at Christ Church College just in time to get into the famous dining hall before the students arrived for their lunch.  Hanley said it was used in the Harry Potter films as the dining hall at Hogwarts.  He wanted to see if he could do a run-up and then slide all the way along one of the long, polished tables, but Polar picked him up just before he could try.

 

"This is an historic building, Hanley," she told him.  "You must be a good bear or we'll all be thrown out!"

We were especially good bears when we went into the Cathedral, which is inside the college grounds.  We bears don't really understand human religions but we do love some of the buildings for them and I think stained glass is so pretty.  Polar, who studied medieval history when she was a student hadn't been to this cathedral before, so we were there a long time while she was looking around.

Polar explained to us that the cathedral was built on the site of a much older abbey which had supposedly been founded by a lady called Frideswide, who was a Saxon princess.  She showed us how you could see several different styles of architecture, from the big, round "Romanesque" pillars from when the abbey was rebuilt in 1180, to the vaulting on the roof in a style called "Perpendicular" which is from the time of King Henry VIII. 

We were glad that the next stop was a coffee shop for Elevenses, with tea and pastries, as our little heads were hurting from Polar trying to cram so many facts into them!  Hanley picked us out a Danish pastry with apricot and custard on it, which was very tasty, and which would give us enough energy for our next adventure.

 

There was even more history after that, with a visit to the Ashmolean Museum.  Hanley Bear and I saw treasures and historic things from all over the world, including Roman statues and Egyptian tombs, but we decided to make a special search for bears.

And we found some, in a room full of objects brought from the ancient kingdoms that used to exist in what is now Iraq, between the famous rivers the Tigris and the Euphrates.  They were only small but they were very, very old.

And I found a very famous book with a bear in it in one corner of a play area for human cubs.

After all that exploring, it was time for afternoon tea, so we had hot chocolate and scones on the terrace of the rooftop cafe at the museum, where we saw a big, red hot-air balloon fly over.  And we still had room for some pizza for dinner that night.

Hanley asked if we could visit the History of Science Museum the following day and our humans agreed, as they thought it looked very interesting too.  We loved all the mechanical things humans had made in the past to try measure time and plot the movement of the stars and planets.  We even found one huge map of the heavens which had a Great Bear picture where the constellation of that name was located.

Then it was time to go home on the train.  We got as far as Birmingham New Street and then found our train back to Stoke from there had been cancelled, so we had a hour to wait for the next one.  I wished I could have taken Hanley to see the view from the office we had been to on the way down, but Polar said it was a bit too far away and might not be open.

"I might have to come again and, if I do, I will take you both up to the 19th floor and we can show Hanley the view then," she said - and she was right!  But that's a story for another post.