Barbara's travels continue 2018

The final day of a great short trip in England with Dennis. We only had a few hours in Oxford, but covered a lot of ground. It’s a magnificent city with so much history and such wonderful architecture. I loved all the pedestrian areas and the fact that biking is commonplace. Our first stop was the Sheldonian Theatre, built between 1664 and 1669 for the University of Oxford, designed by Sir Christopher Wren. It was a fabulous place, steeped in history  Where so many had graduated ( not me! And others have simply enjoyed concerts, events or just the incredible ceiling paintings. We climbed the stairs to the top of the dome for a great view over the city with all its chimneys and spires. It’s a fantastic piece of architecture  As is the Bodleian Library  And the quadrangle, which Dennis visited whilst  I went to an animal exhibition in the library opposite- I liked the humour here.  I discovered, not surprisingly, that in Britain there are 13.5 million pet dogs, 36...

So, our last day in the very attractive Cotswold villages. I think we chose a good route. The first stop was Bibury, which we didn’t expect to be very busy, but then as we desperately searched for a car park, we could see the attraction of this little village with its famous Arlington Row, such a picturesque row of little houses, built way back in the thirteenth century as monastic wool stores and then converted into weavers rooms before becoming homes. Bibury has often been described as one of the most beautiful villages in England and thus is definitely one of the most photographed! So unbelievably charming, but who on earth would wish to live there with so many rowdy tour bus groups, not to mention all the other hundreds of tourists. Taking a photo without a dancing Asian tourist in front of the camera was really difficult and required great patience. There was a field of Belted Galloway, which amazingly, the man working in the ice cream shop beside didn’t know the name of the breed...