HOW WE'RE TRAVELLING...: OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE, DEGREES OF SEPARATION, Sunday/Monday, October 9/10

Neither of us have degrees but that didn't stop us from wanting to see two of the world's most prestigious university cities Oxford and Cambridge. That and Simon's obssession with Inspector Morse. First stop was The Randolph in Oxford, a fancy smancy five star hotel which has a Morse bar dedicated to the Colin Dexter character. There are pics of John Thaw (Morse) and Kevin Whatley (Lewis) and other guest stars around the bar in which some episodes were filmed.
We could only spend a few hours in Oxford as we had to make Cambridge by early evening and given the competative streak between the two, (they refer to each other as 'that other place' there is no direct route between the two but a series of disjointed smaller highways that zigzag through various town centres.
Oxford is a very gothic place full of steeples and gruesome gargoyles. It's a difficult place to drive around and find parking so we opted for the open top bus tour. It was great. Conducted live by a froppy university type with a lisp he gave us the full gamut of names of who went where. A David Cameron here, Tony Blair there, Iris Murdoch lectured here, Rowan Atkinson graduated there. Margaret Thatcher studied chemistry and JR Tolkien hung out there, Lewis Carroll lectured maths of all things but it was the daughter of the Dean of Christchurch college that really gave him his big break, Alice 'Wonderland' Liddell. It was good to hear one of the claim-to-fame stories as we passed University College was one Bob Hawke, former Australian Prime Minister, who broke the world speed record for consuming a yard glass of beer in 11 seconds. Onya Bob.
One of the misconception of these university town is that there is no Oxford University building. The uni is actually made up of many colleges spread across the city so you can't really get in a cab and say take me to Oxford or Cambridge university like you can say Sydney University.
After the convoluted route north east to Cambridge we checked in and strolled around the streets. It's older (Sirs Issac Newton and Francis Bacon's names cropped up) than Oxford but isn't as scary looking. It has also educated the most Nobel Prize winners in the world more than 80 and Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking. On the flipside, this is Monty Python country, again our bus tour pointing out the University Hotel bar where John Cleese worked. But they consider the other funny man Stephen Fry to be the King of Cambridge and it's where he and Hugh Laurie (House) first met and started doing comedy. The Queen or more appropriately Dame of Cambridge is probably Judi Dench.
You can just feel the intellect in these places winners but alas none of it rubbed off on us. We saw a few groups of students the other side of a few ales and could relate more to that. Suppose some of them could be the next generation of PMs, comedians and other leaders in their fields.