Thursday, January 12, 2017

Travels with our Grandkids III a – Oxford

In 2007 I took Keara to a Road Scholar Inter-generational study program in England Harry Potter school (with a little Inspector Morse thrown in for the grandparents) in Oxford. 
Then we went to the European Pipe Band Championships in Inverness, and visited Edinburgh and Glasgow.
I’ll tell the story in terms of my response to a question we saw on July 29, in an article in The Independent on Sunday, “Where were you during the Great Floods of July 2007?” combined with the newspaper’s notes for the week…

We arrived in Oxford on July 18, the day before the Road Scholar program was to start, and on July 19, caught the train to Paddington Station and spent a beautiful sunny day seeing the highlights of London – Big Ben, the Palace, the Tower, and other photo opportunities.

Friday, 20 July: We had a lecture on Tolkien, and the kids were making a map of Middle Earth when the “… heavens opened. Oxfordshire got five inches of rain – normally 90 days’ worth – in five hours” during which we walked around the Oxford Colleges. In the evening, while the kids had their first drama workshop, we went to one of Inspector Morse’s favourite pubs, the Trout at Wolvercote. The deck was awash.