Oxford Questions
 

My husband and I will be staying in Chipping Campden for five nights in September. We will visit Oxford as a daytrip. I have a couple of questions and would appreciate input and opinions.

1. We will utilize one of the park and rides. Which one would be better coming from Chipping Campden?
2. I’m not sure if we will go to Blenheim due to time constraints. Instead, I was thinking about seeing the Uffington White Horse on the way back to Chipping Campden. What do you think?
3. If we choose the White Horse route, where could we go for the best vantage point - excluding a flight ;)
4. I think taking a punt could be a lot of fun, but we don’t want to hire one for ourselves. Has anyone taken a chauffeured punt? If so, what did you think? I was looking at this site: http://oxfordpunting.co.uk/
5. I was also thinking about taking the University and City Walking Tour (I can buy tickets online). http://www.visitoxfordandoxfordshire...op=8&prod=1721 Would it be better to take the tour or do a self-guided tour?

Thank you!

We found our guided tour (the Inspector Morse one) run by the TI to be an excellent intro and overview; I'd highly recommend one of their tours.

You'll be using the Pear Tree park & Ride.

The Uffington White horse is in the wrong direction completely. It is a curiosity but IMO if you skip Blenheim I'd maybe visit the Rollright Stones instead.

Why don't you want to have your own punt - no need to pay someone to pole you down the river (I'm 5 feet tall, not the least bit athletic, and have taken a punt on the Cherwell). But if you want to pay a starving student £25 to punt you - sure, go for it.

>>Would it be better to take the tour or do a self-guided tour?<<

You'll want to do both IMO. None of the tours cover everything so after the walking tour is over, just head out in another direction.

Coming towards Oxford on the A44, you just follow P&R signs.

Getting to Uffington is a 30 min or so drive from that P&R, though in entirely the wrong direction. You pass the gates of Blenheim (and pass about 2 miles from the Rollright Stones and 50 yards from the infinitely less spectacular but certainly untouristy Ent Stone at Enstone) while driving along the A44.

The White Horse view from Dragon Lane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uf...hite_horse.jpg) is close to underwhelming. To see it from above is getting on for another hour finding somewhere to park, climbing (it's an easy, but very uphill, path) to the top of the adjacent hill and working your way back again.

The drive back to Chipping C from Uffington through Lechlade and Burford is arguably pretty enough (the A44 is the key artery of the North Cotswolds, but isn't that much more photogenic than my coronary artery) to make the underwhelmingness of the Horse worth the trip.

If you are going to Uffington, and I would, see if you can take a minute to find the tithe barn at Great Coxwell on the way back. It is a medieval barn of great beauty, filled with tractors last time I was there. Perhaps gussied up by now.

You can then drive back to Chipping Campden as flanneruk suggests. It _is_ a pretty drive.

Thank you for your replies. I had planned on seeing the Rollright Stones, perhaps on the way to Oxford. I was thinking about returning to Chipping Campden by a different route, which is why I proposed the Uffington White Horse then head north from there. I wanted to get opinions from those who have seen it. Any suggestions for a different scenic route to return to C.C.?

We talked about hiring a punt, but we would prefer just to sit back and enjoy the ride. I was wondering if anyone had ever done the chauffeured ride and if it would be worth it.

I have printed out some maps of Oxford so I will be studying them a bit more. It sounds including the guided tour is a good idea. Thank you all for the tips!

These "chauffeurs" aren't gondolieri.

They're (mostly) undergraduates larking about for a bit of beer money - though the more tedious among them will probably give you a 20 minute lecture about how they've been forced to do it by the inequities of a new system expecting students at elite universities repay the taxpayer part of the cost of their education once they've started earning. But only if they earn enough, not if they haven't paid it off after 30 years, and not if their parents are very poor.

The quality - of riverpersonship, story-telling, politeness, customer care, navigational competence, sobriety and personal hygiene - is likely to vary spectacularly from punter to punter.

This isn't some great tourist Must to cross off a list somewhere between walking the Camino de Compostella and diving in the Barrier Reef. It's a quiet (if other punters behave themselves) and pleasant (if it's not pouring) glide through a few backwaters, with little of note to see or do.

"With little of note to see or do" . . . Except for the naked dons :)

as flanner suggests it's a little thing :-)

"Except for the naked dons"

Only if you stumble on a Tardis rather than a conventional punt. Parson's Pleasure disappeared in the 1990s.

Too recently to be properly documented in a book, and too long ago to have been immediately recorded by Google, so the circumstances of its disappearance seem obscure. But I imagine the victim of New Age puritanism.