Brokie Goodbye

Monday morning I awoke early and decided to write a blog post since folks weren't yet stirring in our room. Soon, though, I recognized voices in the court yard of the YHA, which was right outside our window. Dragging our butts out of the room we grabbed breakfast and went out to join them. Many of the people not staying at the YHA had come over. It was a gloriously sunny morning. (too sunny, as I recall trying to pose for this pic!)








Joe n Me


Happy, Corinne, Liza


Sylvain, Marie


Corinne, Sonja, Kim

Dave, Monica, Linda, Sylvain, Marleen, Helen, John
(this one, I believe, was back at University Parks on Sunday. Oh well, it's cute and I wanted to use it!)


Jari, feigning shock at something Sal said.


Sal, reviewing the photo

Alas, at some point we had to check out of the Hostel. Ted had a rental car, so he went and got it and we SHOVED all our luggage plus his into it. On the way down to lunch Dave and I took detours to 1) buy a map of Wales and 2) get cash. I had thought getting a map would be easy. Go into book store, ask for map. Right? Not so, my friend. Went into book store - was totally overwhelmed with the shelves upon shelves of maps of every corner of England. Even New York, Orlando, New Orleans...! But no Wales. We finally purchased an all Great Britain atlas...

The group was slowly dwindling. About fifteen of us remained to do lunch at the Head of the River. Another beautiful outdoor deck by the river. (this one was at the other end of Folly bridge, from where we met for the memorial walk on Saturday)



Kate was ever so kind to mark up our map as to where she suggested we go, which was so very helpful as I had never really put any plans together for that part of the trip. But the inevitable eventually happened. Fifteen became eight.



Five as we headed back towards Ted's car.



Then four as we put Antonella on her bus back to London.



Ted so kindly drove us to the Hertz rental station - which was just outside of Oxford in Kidlington. Fortunately for us, Kate lives in Kidlington, so she caught a ride with us as well. And thank goodness we had both Kate and Ted to count on! Because a less accessible rental car desk I certainly have no desire to ever need to find. We knew it was in the 'auto park' near the municipal airport, but all we could see were dealerships. We finally asked and were told it was within the Vauxhall dealership way at the end of the culdesac. But even once there we were confuzzled. Finally ventured inside and saw the first Hertz sign. Very odd and very frustrating, and oh so chilling to have thought that I'd planned on getting there via bus!

And so we became just two.

Oxford '08 was a fantastic time. We loved getting to meet so many of the Euro-Brokies we hadn't before, and to reconnect with a number of the US-brokies we've met quite a few times now. Rumors are already a flyin as to where the next one will be next summer.

With that, armed with a map and a rental car -- off we went headed for Wales!

The final night

After punting we... would you believe... headed for another pub? Kate, our local pub expert directed us back down High Street (essentially THE street in Oxford, for our purposes at least) a few blocks, and then directed those of us in front to turn right. And we zig zagged back down alleys and streets for quite awhile - I was amazed how far we went without ever having to make a decision about what way to go - it was a single, yet very windy, path. Finally she did shout out to tell us we had missed a turn.

THIS turn, amazingly, down "St. Helen's Passage"




Down around another turn and you came out to this:



Then this:


Then this!


And this lovely outdoor deck wasn't all either -- there was yet another covered deck around the corner.


Now, wait a minute - I don't recall Dave ever sneaking off to sit with the inside group! Lucky I saw this pic on the forum. ;-)

As we were a large group we did split into two - the sun lovers in us drove us to the outdoor deck.




What an amazing pub. I noticed it's on our tourist map of Oxford. Should you go it's well worth hunting it out just for the experience of finding such a gem sandwiched inbetween buildings.

--

Sunday evening we had the (essentially obligatory) movie viewing. Chris had arranged for an independant movie theater in town to do a private showing for us. Exorbitantly expensive, from our frame of reference, but it ended up being a wonderful venue. They had a small bar upstairs where folks gathered prior to the movie, and then we all trouped out into the street for the group photo. This image was actually taken by a passing bicyclist who offered to let our then-photographer get back in the photo. He ended up taking quite a few shots. He was a great sport.



(Click for BIG version)

There were two theaters there, the small one that sits about 90 folks is the one we'd reserved. Very intimate, and yet still a big screen. I was amazed to find out that this was several people's first opportunity to see it on a big screen!



On a side note - a popular feature on the forum is the photo captions thread, where people put new captions to stills from the movie, or about any other picture for that matter. This one was featured recently:



(click to see more photo caps)

(If you are a Brokie who went to Oxford, this is hysterically funny. If not... then lets move on, shall we? ;-) )

Actually, this is funny because of extenuating circumstances the night we watched the movie. One member in our group won an auction some time ago to have lunch with Jake. He did so - in April. And just how he manage to survive the weekend in Oxford with all the Jake fans clamoring over him for intimate details of the experience is something I can't quite account for. In any case, the pertinent information is that he has an email address for Jake. One of many, I'm sure, but one that can get through to him. *faints*

We learned at the beginning of the gathering, that Jake was, in fact, in London preparing for his next movie, the Prince Of Persia. (WHICH, by the way, has WHOLE NEW INTEREST for me since these pictures came out!!! Jake, Horses, AND Mounted Sword Fighting??!! But I digress...)

Anywhoo - our friend very thoughtfully sent a message to said email address, informing Jake that "60 or so BBM fans were in Oxford, a mere hour away, and scheduled to watch BBM on Sunday evening, would he be interested in making an appearance??" LOL - the guts that it takes to do that! Course, this is a man who dared to bid on, win and HAVE lunch with Jake. Jake, via his assitant, of course politely declined. But never the less it was a spine chilling feeling to know he knew who we were and why we were gathered!

The movie, as I've noticed the last several times I've watched it, hit me in a whole new and unique way. In no small part because it was my first full viewing since Heath died. But it fascinates me that I can and do react so very differently each time.

At some point in the evening, the manager of the theater approached Chris to tell her how extraordinary was the impact this movie has had upon all of us. He said he'd never seen any other movie do that. Well, she could have told him to join the club.

Down the street was a large pub, Freuds. Unfortunately some folks were already heading off, back to their real lives. A handfull took off from the movie to catch the Tube Bus back to London. The rest of us walked down to Freuds and proceeded to make the staff there scratch their heads with what just hit them. It was not your typical heavy beam and low ceilinged pub in the least. No it was a large open room with a stage area at the end under a half dome overhead. Rather romanesque. They use the space for live music frequently I guess. Well, it was simplest to just shove our whole group up onto the stage, and then they brought out an assortment of pizzas and finger foods. I kept expecting the rest of the pub to clear out. Maybe we presented a fair amount of entertainment, rightly deserving our position on stage, because the 'regular' customers stuck it out for the most part.





As it was the last night photos were going like crazy. And now I'm going to bore you with a bunch of portraits with some of our favorite brokies...


Me n Chris


Me, Uli, Andy, Steffi


Dave n Julia


Kate n me


Jari n me


Dave n Helen


MiniMe n Me (hee - I've forgotten Janis' hubby's name!)


Michael and Dave modeling their Rockmount shirts. :-)


Antonella, Dave, Me, Ted, Sonja


Clare n Me

Punting, anyone?

Originally posted last week, I've moved this to be in chronological order of the trip.

So - Lydia requested an explanation of punting. What -- haven't you heard of it? LOL

From Wikipedia:
A punt is a flat-bottomed boat with a square-cut bow, designed for use in small rivers or other shallow water. Punting refers to boating in a punt. The punter generally propels the punt by pushing against the river bed with a pole. A punt should not be confused with a gondola, which is propelled with an oar rather than poled.

Punts were originally built as cargo boats or platforms for fowling and angling but in modern times their use is almost exclusively confined to pleasure trips on the rivers in the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge in England and races at a few summer regattas on the Thames.

In other words --


Wow - I just noticed that both of the really publicized boat houses are mentioned on that picture. Not only that, but the Magdalen Bridge one includes the tower that is, in fact, right there. Look below, you'll see it again.

Anyways, I always think of punting when I think of Oxford, for that is one of the things we did when I was 10 and living in the area for a few months. So I put it out to the group that those who were interested could meet at the boat house Sunday afternoon. As is typical, the brokies completely overran the place - they had seats for waiting punters for about a dozen people. We had like 30 show up.



Only, when it came time to divvying up the boats -- we had only 2 folks brave enough to try the punting - Ted and I - and only 8 interested in riding along. *shrugs* Perfect fit for 2 punts. (Actually another group went out, but they arrived late so went after we'd returned)

Ingmar, Mr. S, and Andy were total wusses and took a paddle boat out.


Dahlia's family took out a row boat... I think. They left after we did and while we were still in the chaos part of our trip, so I don't really know what they did!

The day was unbelievably clear blue and beautiful, but the wind was blowing briskly in areas. As I wanted to go the hard direction first, we tried turning upstream immediately from the dock. LOL! What a disaster that was. The current was determinedly pushing us down under the bridge. Ted hadn't actually been informed of the plan - so we both spent some time mucking about up there.



I eventually had to just walk to the other end of the punt (diving over/between my 4 passengers) and voila! We got it under control right after that. :-)



Getting into the quieter part of the river, it became much easier to steer and propel the boat, though both of us did spend a fair amount of time zig-zagging back and forth across the river. Close encounters were frequent...



And sometimes rather irksome! This might have been the rose bush incident, I'm not exactly sure.



Ted, looking good!



After teasing Ted all the way upstream, it was time to turn around and I let him approach our boat... and what do I get for that? He rammed me.



It was so much fun - and yes, much more fun going back down stream than the upstream leg!



The Punting Champs. Or as Dave has just dubbed this picture,
The Punting Queens.

Canal Stroll

Oops, missed a day there -- we had a good 4th of July weekend, and thus not much computer work got done. :-D I actually made some great progress on my equipment for the equestrian games -- will have to blog about that after the trip posts are finished.
~~~~~~~~~

Sunday morning nothing was scheduled. Standing around after breakfast we latched onto a group that was going walking. On our way back to town - the route we'd traveled about a 1000 times so far - I waived down those in front to tell them I wanted to pop down this tow path a bit. We'd passed it many times and I kept noting that we should check it out when the chance arose.

Really, my intent was to just tell them Dave and I were doing this and to find out how would we catch up after? But they all decided to follow us. Andy kinda just stared at me when I returned with the group. "I can't help it - it's in my NATURE to organize, Andy!" He laughed.

And - it ended up being a great walk! We went a mile or so down the canal:






Hopping off the canal we ended up in a cute residential area. John had brought with him a map (smart man) and we discovered we weren't far from University Parks - so we went there.




Even found a Cricket Match going on.



We were generally headed towards the punting boat house since the Cherwell river boarded one edge of the park - but were not able to find a tow path that paralleled the river once we'd reached the boundary of the park. So we back tracked a bit into town and wandered to find lunch. Not just to find lunch, but that could accommodate all of us. I was definitely on the way to recommending we split into smaller groups, when someone found just what we needed, of all places at a cafe in St Mary's Cathedral. Chi had called me just on our way - she was able to come to Oxford just for the day and had just arrived on the bus. She met up with us at St. Mary's.


Bob, Chi, Helen, Marleen, Sylvain, Linda, Ing, Sonja, Me, Dave.

And then... of course... we went Punting! Tomorrow, before the new post goes up I'll move the Punting one into chronological order.