Karen McCullough

The mall in Oxford. It was pretty deserted at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, but would be bustling later in the day.

Saturday morning saw us getting an early start into Oxford for a nine-thirty tour of the Bodleian Library.  We signed up for the extended tour, which proved well worth the extra cost. Steph’s family was due to arrive for a visit later in the day, so she and Freya remained at home. It would’ve been difficult to manage this trip with the baby, in any case, since we went up and down many sets of stairs.

(BTW: You can click on them to enlarge most of the pictures.)

The Old Divinity School

However we got into Oxford well before the tour started, so we took some time to rectify the coffee deficit caused by getting up and leaving so early. Thus we encountered one of the more interesting contrasts in the city. Following our son’s lead, we ducked through glass doors set between a couple of probably Renaissance era buildings and found ourselves in a remarkably modern shopping mall hidden behind that façade. A stop at Costa Coffee provided fuel for the upcoming tour.

More of the ceiling.

The Bodleian Library is truly amazing. The tour begins in the old Divinity School, in the oldest examination room of the entire university.  This is a wonder of gothic architecture, so grand I took many pictures and most of them don’t begin to do it justice. The elaborately decorated ceiling has 455 bosses which feature religious symbols, monograms and shields representingbenefactors and others associated with the building.

Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures in what is arguably the most interesting section, Duke Humfrey’s medieval library. It sits right above the old divinity school in one of the oldest buildings in Oxford.  The building has been lovingly and beautifully refurbished, so it looks marvelous for its age. For a book lover it’s truly a cathedral to learning.

The Bodleian Library Quadrangle

It has a remarkable collection of ancient books, the kind you’d hesitate to touch for fear they might crumble to dust in your fingers. You can ready about the history of this remarkable piece of the library here: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/docs/historybodleian.pdf . The page includes wonderful pictures of some of the old books that we were able to view.

The Radcliffe Camera

Almost as interesting to many of those on the tour with us (including ourselves) was that a section of this old part of the library was used for filming the library scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

The tour then took us through a series of underground tunnels that connect most of the main buildings, including the more modern underground stacks and reading areas located under the old quadrangle, and finally into what is probably the most photographed building in all of Oxford – the Radcliffe Camera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radcliffe_Camera).  It’s as beautiful inside as it is out, though considerably more modern, having recently undergone a renovation and updating.

View of the Library through one of the windows of the divinity school.

Despite its impressive, stalwart façade, on a sunny day the interior is bright and cheerful due to the open plan and light from many upper windows. Once again you tend to feel like you’re in a cathedral dedicated to learning as you soak in the atmosphere.

Later in the day we met Steph’s parents and one of her sisters, visiting from Kent, and went on to the Seven Stars Pub for a lovely dinner.  I won’t detail it here, since I’m going to talk more extensively about food in my next post, but will say that none of us went away hungry, and the walk we took after the meal was quite welcome.

Freya with her parents and both sets of grandparents

This post is part of the FALL INTO ROMANCE Blog Hop. More information about the Hop can be found here: www.hopswithheart.blogspot.com .  For more details on how you can win various prizes, be sure to read to the end.

Fall in central North Carolina tends to be short and glorious. The weather normally stays warm until well into October.  Then we’ll have a month or so of near-perfection. Warm–not hot–days and cool nights, usually lasting until around Thanksgiving, when winter arrives, often in a rush of icy rain and freezing temperatures.

But for that one month when Autumn is with us, it’s wonderful. Fall weekends are a great time for long walks to enjoy the crisp, clear air and changing colors of the trees and shrubs, followed by hot spiced cider at home and a football game on the television or a long writing session.

Autumn makes a great setting for stories, too.  My newest book, The Detective’s Dilemma, coming in November from Kensington, is set in the Fall.  This is my first all-new release in three years, so I’m particularly excited about it.

But I have two other books already available that are set in the Fall:

Guardian of the Grimoire

Magic,  mystery and romance combine in a gothic story that sees a peaceful, small-town  library turned into a supernatural battleground. In the library’s basement a  dangerous book lies hidden somewhere in stacks of old crates, and librarian  Jess O’Rourke is caught in the middle of a battle between a demon and the  book’s mysterious guardian for possession of it…

Unmasking

A Short Halloween Ghost Story – Free at Smashwords; $.99 everywhere else

A smart-ass ghost isn’t Trace’s preferred companion  at a Halloween party, especially when he really is a ghost and he wants her to  deliver a deadly message.

Contest Info: I’ll be giving away a free download copy of the winner’s choice of either A Question of Fire or A Gift for Murder to a randomly chosen commenter.

Enter Below for the Main Hop Prize of a $75 Amazon Gift Card
a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Blog

Freya in her car seat, ready to go off on another adventure

On Thursday we packed the baby and all her gear into the car and took off for Wiltshire and Stonehenge. It’s a place I’ve wanted to visit for most of my life, but I’m kind of glad I waited this long. Recent archaeological research has uncovered so much more about the monument and its surroundings.

The National Heritage of England has also just finished building an entirely new visitor center/museum complex about a mile from the stones themselves, and they’re in the process of removing an older visitor center and car park that was placed way too close and clearly inadequate to increasing crowds.

The new center was badly needed. On a sunny day in August, the crowd was huge. The main part of the car park, which could probably handle 200-300 automobiles, was already full, but we were directed to a secondary area that was clearly not far removed from its roots as a sheep pasture. As we unloaded from the car, they were opening up another overflow parking area that looked like the sheep has just been shooed off it to make room for automobiles. Fortunately we’d bought tickets online which allowed us to bypass the long line for the ticket booth.

Stonehenge from the A303. I took this through the car window, which is why it’s so blurry.

Finally we got through the entrance area and hopped on one of the shuttles from the visitor center to the actual site.  This would actually be our second sighting of the monument, since it’s clearly visible from the A303, a main east-west road that runs along right beside it. An unfortunate coincidence of the road narrowing from four lanes to two and the sudden, startling appearance of the stones ensures that traffic backs up for quite a distance as you approach.

But when the shuttle bus lets you off near the monument, the stones are barely visible. You follow a paved path over a slight hill and the monoliths rise into view above you.

I’ve seen pictures of Stonehenge all my life and was prepared to be underwhelmed. It’s nothing but a bunch of big rocks after all. It didn’t happen.

Stonehenge, like The Grand Canyon and a few other places I haven’t yet been to, is one of those places that just has to be experienced. No words, no pictures can capture the size, the grandeur, the sheer visceral impact of those gigantic stones sitting upright on the rolling hills of the Wiltshire Plains. You don’t even need to consider how a Neolithic people could have managed to move some of those behemoths over 150 miles without benefit of motorized transportation to be awed.

The shuttle bus from the visitor center to the monument.

You just stare at it, soak in it, let it speak to you in its own language. It’s not just the size. There’s something hypnotizing about the concentric arrangement of the outer circle, with its ring of capstones, and the inner horseshoe.  Fortunately there’s just enough of it left to make pretty clear what it must have looked like in its prime.

It still sits out on a mostly deserted (except for the crowds around the stone circle, held back from actual contact with it by a low fence), rolling plain amidst extensive sheep pastures. It’s not hard to put yourself in the place of those early peoples and think about what it must have been like to journey over the plains, through trees, across streams, and then arrive at a monument that is still overwhelmingly impressive today, even half in ruins, in an age of skyscrapers reaching almost beyond human vision.

The museum at the Visitor Center is fascinating as well, though somewhat anti-climactic after viewing the monument itself. The most interesting feature to me was the facial reconstruction of a man they’d found buried at the site. We tend to think of those Neolithic people as looking cruder that us, somehow, more like Neanderthals, in fact. But in truth, put that man who was buried thousands of years ago into modern clothes and give him modern grooming and you’d wouldn’t blink twice if you passed him on the street.

More pictures from Stonehenge:

Viewed from the north.

Viewed from the east

The guys

Freya is less than impressed.

South view

After a long night’s sleep (badly needed), we were ready to set out into Oxford. There’s a lot to do and see in town and it’s a fairly easy drive or bus ride from their house into the center of town. Or it would’ve been an easy drive if they hadn’t been digging up the road and re-routing several of the roundabouts, resulting in traffic congestion, delays and confusing “diversions.”  That’s one of those small usage differences between American usage and British.  We’d call them “detours.”

Anyway, once in Oxford, we made our way through the crowds of tourists to the museums. Here we split up for a while.  My daughter-in-law, grand-daughter and I headed for the Children’s Story Museum, while my husband and son went straight to the Ashmolean.

Steph and Freya post beside the Story Machine. Some of the costumes available for trying on are behind them.

The Children’s Story Museum (http://www.storymuseum.org.uk/) was doing a wonderfully imaginative exhibition of well-known UK writers dressed up and then photographed in costume as their favorite fictional characters. Each one was given a room or bit of space anyway that was set up as the setting for the character. Characters ranged from Badger to Mary Poppins, from Anansi the Spider to Long John Silver, and from Merlin to Dr. Jeckyll/Mr. Hyde.

Merlin’s Cave

The rooms were set up with minimal props and decoration, but clever lighting and arrangement of the props produced some amazing evocative settings. In one room, there’s an unassuming wardrobe in a corner. Had we not been warned by one of the docents, we might’ve ignored it, but instead we cautiously opened the door and walked in. Pushing through a couple of old coats hanging behind the door, we found ourselves in… Narnia, of course. Created by a windowless room with black walls and fake snow on the floor, some bare trees with lights strung between them, a sleigh in the corner and the lamppost next to it. The white witch glared at us from a life-size photo on the wall. Merlin’s cave was a converted closet at the end of a hall. The hallway had faux vegetation draping the walls and an ancient-looking book of spells rested on a low podium.

Narnia

One of the permanent features of the Children’s Story Museum is a room with a group of costumes that children (and adults, too) can dress in to become a variety of characters. There’s also a “talking throne” where families or children can have their picture taken. For me, the most fascinating piece of the exhibit was the Victorian Story Machine, a masterpiece of steampunk design and fantasy engineering. Supposedly a metal bonnet sat on a child’s head and, powered by the child’s imagination, the machine would then pour out a story.

The Story Museum made great use of a group of run-down buildings around a back-alley in Oxford. It’s still in development, but has wonderful potential and some creative minds behind it.

When we were done there, we joined the guys at the Ashmolean. We splurged on lunch at the museum’s upscale Dining room, and found ourselves confronted with a seasonal menu that befuddled all of us. I recognized almost nothing they offered, though a bit more explanation revealed mostly familiar ingredients. The food itself proved quite tasty, however, and we all left satisfied.

We had only a little time left for the museum, since we had a two-month-old baby with us, but the one must-see on the list was one of the most remarkable treasures of the museum, the Alfred Jewel, an amazingly beautiful piece of Anglo-Saxon jewelry.  The Wikipedia article here gives more on its background and is well worth reading.

The Alfred Jewel – By Geni (Photo by user:geni) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Following a stop at Sainsbury’s to pick up some cat food for the grandkitty, we headed back home.