Oxford in a day, slowly: an unhurried itinerary for first-time visitors
A day in Oxford is not really long enough, but it is the amount of time most visitors have, and used well it is more than enough to come away in love with the place. The trick is to resist the urge to "do" everything. Two colleges seen properly are worth seven seen at a trot. What follows is the itinerary we give to friends visiting for the first time.
9.00 — Coffee in Jericho
Start north of the centre, in Jericho. Coffee at one of the independents on Walton Street, a short stroll past the Oxford University Press buildings, and you are five minutes from Port Meadow if you want to begin the day with grass and horses instead of stone.
10.00 — The Bodleian and the Radcliffe Camera
Walk down through the centre to the Bodleian Library quad. Take the half-hour library tour if it is running — it is the best-value introduction to the university in the city. The Radcliffe Camera, the great domed reading room opposite, is one of the most photographed buildings in England for a reason.
11.30 — One college, slowly
Pick one. New College, with its mediaeval cloisters and a stretch of the original city wall, is our usual choice; Magdalen, with its deer park and riverside walk, is the prettier option in spring. Avoid trying to visit three.
13.00 — Lunch on the river
Walk through Christ Church Meadow down to the Thames, and either eat at the Head of the River pub by Folly Bridge or pick up a sandwich from the covered market and find a bench. Watch the rowers. This is the most Oxford thing you can do at lunchtime.
14.30 — The Ashmolean
The oldest public museum in the world, free, and large enough that you can spend twenty minutes or three hours in it. We suggest twenty, and recommend the Egyptian galleries and the Pre-Raphaelite rooms upstairs.
16.00 — Out to Binsey
This is the part most visitors miss. Walk back through Jericho and out across Port Meadow to the hamlet of Binsey, with its tiny twelfth-century church and its famous treacle well. Half an hour each way, flat the whole distance, and a complete change of register after a morning of colleges and crowds. Tea in the garden of the Perch is the natural reward.
19.00 — Dinner back in town
Jericho is full of good small restaurants; book ahead at weekends. If you want something more old-fashioned, Brown's on Woodstock Road has been feeding Oxford for a very long time and is none the worse for it.
A note on getting around
Almost everything in this itinerary is walkable. Oxford is small, the centre is largely pedestrianised, and a car is more hindrance than help. If you are arriving from London, the train from Paddington or Marylebone drops you ten minutes' walk from the centre. If you are coming from further afield — Heathrow, Birmingham, Manchester — and would rather not begin the day exhausted, the calmest option is a pre-booked car door-to-door; for anyone landing at Birmingham in particular, a quiet private chauffeur transfer down the M40 is a more restful way to arrive than wrestling with luggage on the cross-country train.
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