Valentine's Day Trip to Oxford

Hi everyone,

I had the most amazing weekend. On Saturday we ventured out to the lovely Oxford where we did some walking, exploring and eating too. Oxford has two markets in its town centre. One that is a bit more of a vintage and food outdoor market whilst the other is more of a mixture of food, plants, cakes and homemade gifts indoor market. The first market we saw is called Gloucester Green Market. Although it had a variety of food stalls, the vintage side of it was more bric a brac so I unfortunately wasn't all that impressed.

But fear not, The Covered Market was only a short walk away and it blew us away. The variety of market stalls and little places to eat looked amazing and the architecture alone had stunned us. We found this beautiful little cake shop that did cakes to order but also had produce to sell in store as well as baking equipment. It's called The Cake Shop and we brought some Jelly Babbies for my mum as well as two new cookie cutters for me.

Here is their website: https://the-cakeshop.co.uk/

We also found a shop that sells fridge magnets, postcards etc. of Oxford. So two postcards and two fridge magnets later, I was starving so we went off in search of lunch.

We found an M&S nearby and had lunch there. They do some lovely jacket potatoes (which I happily demolished) and a scrumptious lasagne (which my husband happily enjoyed). Once I was fed, it was time to explore what historical architecture this city had.

Known for it's university and the boat race team, we decided to explore some of the older university buildings. One we found was the Oxford Centre for Anxiety Disorders & Trauma. It is on Paradise Square in Oxford's city centre (near Westgate Shopping Centre) and used to belong to John Stansfeld who was the rector of nearby St Ebbe's Church and who lived there from 1912-1926 (see picture below).

Another place that we stumbled upon whilst walking was Oxford Castle & Prison which parts of it have now been used and converted into the hotel Malmaison Hotel. There are still remains of the castle and prison including the crypt and there are tours by costumed guides as well. We only explored the grounds rather than go inside. But from our pictures you can see we saw the gardens plus the entrance to the punishment cells.

You'll also find that Oxford backs onto the River Thames. Through the Castle Mill Stream and the River Cherwell you can just about see the entry to the River Thames from a distance. There is also a road called Thames Street nearby Oxford's Ice Rink.

We thought about taking a tour bus around Oxford but at £18 each just to explore Oxford for 1 year with the company seemed a bit steep... By then I was getting tired (having been up since around 5:30am full of excitement) so we walked back towards the station to see when the next train back to London was. We skipped the first train as there was only 5 carriages and full to the brim. Roll on 4pm I thought when the next train to London Paddington was coming and would have more carriages thus giving us a chance to have a seat going back.

We would definitely visit again to explore more of Oxford's architecture and maybe walk a little bit beside the River Thames.

Have you ever been to Oxford? Any recommendations for our next visit?

Love,

Lily xxx