A gentle stroll around Oxford

I visited Oxford in mid February with an EOS camera, a couple of lenses covering 28-105 and 75-300 and some of the cheap process paid Fuji slide film from 7 day shop. I also took a polariser.

It was quite chilly but the light was kind and it is a very easy, level walk. A word of warning - the main route into Oxford from the station takes you past the shiny shop windows of Jessops - this stroll was a little on the expensive side for me!

You quickly reach the shops which are pleasant enough, but walk a little further in most directions and you will get to the interesting buildings and colleges.

Here intersting details can be sought, as well as the more famous viewpoints.

Oxford is just a short hop up the M40 from Maidenhead, and is served by park and rides (the city centre has contorversial traffic prevention arrangements). It is very well served by trains from here, currently £12 day return.

At a population of around 135,000 it is smaller than Windsor and Maidenhead. You can walk to the River Thames (where I phtographed the tall glass coated staircase serving a modern flatted development). The town is best known for the University of Oxford. First occupied in Saxon times as a fording point, it became a burg, built to defend the northern frontier of Wessex from Danish attack; it was first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of AD 912. Little remains of the town's Norman period of occupation. Oxford is generally known as the “City of Spires” because of its skyline of Gothic towers and steeples. Most of these 15th–17th-century buildings belong to the university. The city was the Royalist headquarters in the English Civil Wars. Its modern economy is varied and includes, in addition to educational services, printing and publishing industries and automobile manufacturing, and of course a shiny Jessops. A lot of us, and a great deal more of the American tourists, know it as the fictional death capital of England, home to Mr one-jag himself, Morse. (Some of which filmed in Bray, on Dorney Common etc.).

Slides were scanned with a Minolta slide scanner. Some have been tweaked on Elements, some have been fiddled with to lessen distortion and converging verticals (less difficult than I thought it would be), and then all converted to a web-friendly size. MCC members - give it a go.

I intend to go back to Oxford, perhaps with different lenses, and will update this page with the results. Click on any of the images at the top of the screen to enlarge.

Blow the dust off your lens and enjoy the spring time!

-- MikeKiely - 30 Apr 2005