9 reasons to visit Oxford, England

Visitor highlights in Oxford include Christ Church, the Story Museum, Thames boat tours and guided literary walks.

Oxford Castle and Prison

The Oxford Castle and Prison complex incorporates St George’s Tower, which is over 1,000 years old and is widely believed to be the oldest non-religious building in England. The thoroughly enjoyable tours cover a series of boisterous stories – an escaping queen, a deadly curse, a hungover ghost – while climbing the tower, descending to the crypt and showing off the grim former prison cells.

Christ Church College

Oxford’s character comes from its famed university colleges. If you’re picking just one to visit, then Christ Church is the biggest, and comes swathed in architectural grandeur.  It also comes with its very own cathedral, a gallery casually dotted with Old Master paintings and an absurdly incongruous sprawling meadow, where grazing cows amble in the sunshine.

Blackwell’s book shop

Members of the prestigious Oxford alumni list, containing numerous world leaders and Nobel Prize-winners, have one thing in common: They’ve probably all bought books from Blackwell’s at some point. The academic and specialist bookseller on Broad Street is a treasure trove of obscure subject matters, hefty tomes and big thoughts.

Literary walking tours

Of course, books aren’t just read in Oxford – they are written, too. And Oxford Official Walking Tours runs a guided walk that visits the former haunts of Oxford authors CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. If Narnia and Hobbits don’t do it for you, then the company also runs tours themed around Inspector Morse and supposedly haunted sites.

The Story Museum

There are more terrific tales at the Story Museum, which immerses kids in more than a thousand years of stories. The presentation is fabulous, whether listening to fables and Grimm fairy tales in an indoor woodland, bouncing on the bed in a mock-up of Horrid Henry’s bedroom or learning how to draw cartoon animals in the comic book section. Amid the interactive fun, Oxford-penned classics from Arthurian legend to His Dark Materials get their place in the spotlight.

The University museums

The Pitt Rivers Museum is not so much a museum as a staggering hoarding of international clutter. It is firmly in the stuff in glass cabinets school of presentation, but the barrage of anthropological pilfering is so densely-packed that you can’t help finding it incredible. Moving from Algerian surgical instruments to Chinese pigeon whistles, Polynesian outrigger canoes and clothing from Greenland has a deliriously trippy effect.

It’s one of several University-affiliated museums that make Oxford one of the world’s best universities to visit. Others include the Ashmolean Museum, Museum of Natural History, the Bodleian Library and the History of Science Museum.

Thames boat trips

Salter’s Steamers runs 40 minute boat trips along the River Thames, taking in the geese, quaint bridges, college boatsheds and practicing rowers. There’s a sense of heritage, too, with the cruises departing from the river island where the Salter Brothers started making riverboats more than a century ago. Should you wish to explore the river under your own steam, Salter’s Steamers also hires out punts.

The Cherwell Boathouse

Of course, you may prefer to take in all this riverside activity from the bank, with wine in hand and a feast in front of you. That’s where the Cherwell Boathouse comes in. The menu here aims for modern European, although there are a few local touches with the Cotswold-reared chicken and strawberries picked nearby. A sommelier is on hand to pick the perfect bottle for watching punters glide by.

Blenheim Palace

Oxfordshire‘s grandly baroque Blenheim Palace, with lavish interiors, a huge art collection and seemingly endless gardens, is ten miles north-west of Oxford. It also happens to be the birthplace of Winston Churchill. A visit includes the room where he was born, and the Churchill Exhibition, which explores the British wartime leader’s life and legacy.

Dogs are allowed in the Blenheim Palace grounds, but not the palace itself. Weekday mornings are the quietest times to visit.

More South-East England travel

Other South-East England travel articles on Planet Whitley include:

• A first time visitor’s guide to Windsor.
• Discovering the secrets of the wartime codebreakers at Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes.
• What to expect at Waverley Abbey in Surrey.
• What to see at Brighton’s Royal Pavilion – and what it’ll cost you.
• How to find the Pooh Sticks Bridge in Ashdown Forest.