Oxford: Search and Destroy

Repeated ahead of the bank holiday weekend:

"Where should we go within 90 minutes of Oxford, in the next three days, that won't be flooded?"

The starlings are incredible at Otmoor, at the moment. I reckon you need to be by the hide/reed beds by 1500.

What would someone standing on the Water Eaton Park & Ride bridge, over the A34, be hoping to see? They were there, with binoculars, for at least four hours today.

weird wide loads being delivered to didcot?

Seems the most likely answer.

Anyone care about the proposed erosion of Green Belt around Oxford?

i am pretty much pro housing development all the time, anywhere anyone wants to. and the university has serious medium/long term problems if it's not allowed to develop out or up. but i haven't lived in oxford for years so would be interested to hear what's new.

http://www.cpreoxon.org.uk/news/item/2581-consultation-on-cherwell-local-plan-part-1-have-your-say

you don't think it's important to keep some green spaces in cities?

xp

There's always the traditional plan of just bunging another 20,000 houses in Bicester and hoping for the best, of course.

imo you can't have a green belt the diameter of oxford's and such a low limit on building height without it become a sclerotic tourist trap where only students and the fabulously wealthy live. green belt or height limit: POO.

the limitation on building height is a bit crazy -- the tallest building in Oxford is the spire of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin at 55 metres, completed 1641! Next up are the two residential tower blocks in Blackbird Leys, both at 48 metres, completed 1962. If it was OK to build tall buildings in the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, then why not today? It's a nonsense.

There's always the traditional plan of just bunging another 20,000 houses in Bicester and hoping for the best, of course.

- I imagine that within two decades Oxford will just meet Bicester except perhaps broken by the Oxford-Cambridge road link (I haven't been able to work out the imagined/proposed route for this).

Bicester is currently nipping at Chesterton's ankles, so I can see that.

(on my annual visit home and seeing what's changed)

Any suggestions for good things to do in Oxfordshire on ... well, tomorrow?

That's a vague question, I know.

Or any weekend, for that matter?

I occasionally swim in the Thames in Oxford, at the midpoint(ish) between the Trout and the Perch pubs, from the opposite bank to Port Meadow. Are there nicer bits? I'm wondering if there's anywhere slightly north of the Trout??

No help here, though we did swim a very short walk north of the perch last summer. As children we used to swim virtually right in the middle of town, by the old railway bridge south of the ice rink - can't imagine anyone doing that now.

i swam in the river at the bottom of port meadow on the way to the perch. also probably not a good idea in 2018.

Ta.

Why so, Caek?

river traffic is up i think and that's already a very slow bit of the thames, so i'm assuming there's more diesel in the water? but maybe its fine!

new westgate centre: classic or dud? i'm no lover of shopping centres - stratford westfield is my idea of hell on earth - but i don't hate the new westgate. maybe it's because i visited in summer and got to appreciate the light and the views over the town, maybe it was the appealing mystery of trying to figure out how it fitted into the old westgate (visiting for the first time from the south entrance, one level below the old westgate and through what was the no-mans land of the multi storey car park, was very confusing). or maybe it's just an improvement on the extension of the centre that has appeared remarkably consistently in recurring dreams of mine over many years, a long wide dark tunnel, largely empty and somewhat ominous, stretching out over the oxpens road.

Westgate: I sort of ... can't be bothered with it.

well fair enough it is just a shopping centre. I'm probably a wee bit more interested because it's not so far from my parents/my old house & route into town, and it is at least an improvement on a car park.

I could see how it would be interesting in a "route into town" sort of way. It doesn't suit me as it has pulled stuff away from my route to/from work and, I suppose, the feel of it isn't very me.

I have a table at the Oxford Guild of Printers Wayzgoose at the Headington campus of Oxford Brookes this coming Saturday, if any of you fancy coming to say hello:

https://www.wayzgoose.info/events/oxford-guild-of-printers-wayzgoose/

There will be quite a lot of very brilliant printed matter on display, also a table with me sitting behind it (I'm "The Half Pint Press").

Couldn't decide on a better thread to ask this but any idea how long Covid-19 tests are taking in Oxfordshire, specifically the Oxford Parkway site?

Gah! 5+ days, seemingly ...

anyone here from oxford & environs, what do *you* call the M40 cutting on the way to london officially known as the "Aston Rowant Cutting, also known as the Stokenchurch Gap or Aston Hill cutting"?

this: https://goo.gl/maps/9wAaamF8GKA23j456

"The Cut" is what we called it (I'm originally from Bicester)

What I really want to know is, does anyone call it chicken shit canyon, or similar? Supposedly because they sprayed the sides with the stuff to help grass grow and stabilise it. Don't know where I picked up the name from, I remember a teacher calling it chicken muck pass, not sure if he was bowdlerising it for our benefit. This information isn't on Wikipedia, I feel it needs to be saved for posterity but there are only a handful of references on the web in a couple of random forums.

morning bump for this crucial investigation.

Any recommendations for Oxford(shire) Brutalist/Modernist buildings?

I've had the slightly wine-fuelled idea that I should compile myself a tour.

St. Catherine's College, the Denys Wilkinson Building, the Garden building at St. Hildas, the Florey Building, the Margery Fry House for a start?

DWB is a banger

wolfson college too?

Maybe a little recent for you but the Bishop Edward King Chapel, Ripon College (in Cuddeston, just outside Oxford) is somewhere I’d like to visit.

St Cross building?

Wadham college library?

Not brutalist but tooling around in google maps I just noticed the Blavatnik School of Government building next to Freud on Walton St which is pretty neat and passed me by (unsurprisingly as I haven't lived in oxford for over twenty years).

There was a time (when I first moved to Oxford) when I thought Frevd's was a place of wonder. And then it suddenly seemed to be a waste of an amazing space. Haven't been for years, so don't know how it is currently being used. I guess it is airy?

I was never 'cool' or clued in enough to go there much at all, glad it's still there though.

This looks good for mooching:

https://bluecrowmedia.com/products/modern-oxford-map

looks good, I bet there are some hidden gems. the monstrously mysterious denys wilkson building may have been a formative influence on my penchant for brutalism, along with the nazi fortifications in guernsey, where we often holidayed.

I was disappointed to find out (online, not in person) that the nosebag had closed. is georgina's in the covered market still open? google says yes but no reference on the covered market website.

Did my PhD in the DWB. sat at the top of the tower for the last year.

was it a phd in opening a dark portal to the non euclidean realm of the elder gods?

I was disappointed to find out (online, not in person) that the nosebag had closed. is georgina's in the covered market still open? google says yes but no reference on the covered market website.

Was never a fan of the Nosebag and didn't mourn its passing.

Georgina's is still there, although the character of the Covered Market is very different now, ledge. There are two pop-up pubs now, for example.

Oxford Cheese Company is my main reason to visit it these days.

It's great that the Grapes is back open on George Street, complete with 3D bunch of grapes sign. Too bad they've taken away the wooden divides, but they now have a turntable and a stack of records which you can leaf through and ask them to play.

was it a phd in opening a dark portal to the non euclidean realm of the elder gods?

x-post - the Covered Market is a curious thing. Like, there's a wine shop (an off-shoot of Eynsham Wine Cellars) and a pizza place side-by-side, with shared tables and a seeming agreement that you'd probably buy from both ... but it doesn't quite work with the utter grimness of the nearest toilets.