Tuesday 23 October 2012

Ready! Steady! …………..

Our daily river check this morning brought better news – the yellow (stream decreasing) boards are now out almost everywhere along the Thames from Oxford to Reading and, with a bit of luck, we’ll be able to leave tomorrow morning.
To make good use of today we walked up to Oxford Prison and climbed the “Hangman’s Hill” for the view.
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This is Oxford Prison from Hangman’s Hill – now a “Malmaison” Hotel the prison still had 3 men to a cell as late as 1996.  The round tower just right of centre is the Debtors Prison, where those owning money were incarcerated until they paid up.  There were some long terms served in there we understand!
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Doug on the top of the hill with the tower of Nuffield College in the background.
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We popped into the Malmaison Hotel to have a look around.  The cells are now the bedrooms and it’s been very well converted – if a little dark in places.
Our next port of call was the Museum of Science History which is housed in the original Ashmolean Museum building.  Among other things a stunning collection of  historical scientific instruments are on display.
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This blackboard has been preserved from the 2nd of three lectures made by Albert Einstein in Oxford on 16 May1931.  The first three lines establish an equation for the expansion of the universe and the lower four lines provide numerical values for the expansion, radius and age of the universe. (my goodness!)
Returning to the boat, we met up with our neighbour for the last few days - Rob Pointon is a professional artist.
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This is his latest piece – the interior of the Divinity School in the Bodleian Library, which we visited ourselves only a few days ago.   Having been shown other pieces of his work we can certainly say he is very talented.
So – with a bit of luck we’ll be getting the anchor out and life jackets on tomorrow morning.  Fingers crossed!

6 comments:

  1. Don't know about anchor and life jacket, think you will need a fog horn if its anything like up here at the moment, fog, and more fog!

    Hope you manage to get on the river and on the move again.

    Ali x

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  2. The Thames has been so moody this year - we dashed back to Limehouse 10 days ago having had the fastest (flow assisted)cruise downriver ever!

    Hope you have a great cruise...

    Sue, nb Indigo Dream

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  3. We were planning to come to Oxford and then go down to Henley this month. We gave up when we found out about conditions on the Cherwell and Thames. We did other things and then returned home to Yardley Gobion. Please see http://nbalbert.blogspot.co.uk/ I have added you to my blog list - how about the same in return? You appeared to enjoy Oxford. Good luck as river levels fall. I hope they stay that way, Steve P

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  4. Caroline and Martin24 October 2012 at 09:36

    oooh the suspense, just like a good book, waiting to read the next chapter, Caroline and Martin

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  5. I've never actually heard it called 'hangman's hill' before - it is the motte of the original Norman castle, and as such (I like to think) my ancestral home!

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  6. Aha! I think I know who you are, Anonymous! Debbie x

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