I Put the “Backpack” Back in “Backpacking”

Written Tuesday, 12 August

After getting a good night’s sleep in my Brighton hotel, I started to ponder how I could make this trip a lot more fun. Considering that the first day of my trip had been rather nightmarish, I tried to figure out all the factors that I was able to control (since I knew I didn’t have much control over what my hostels would be like). My other biggest frustration was the amount of luggage I had to carry with me. I kept berating myself for not designing a “circle” trip that would both start and finish in London because then I could have stored my excess baggage there. Seeing as I couldn’t change that now, I tried to figure out how if it would be possible to rid myself of some of my luggage without paying a huge fee to ship more stuff home.

That morning in Brighton, I decided to try to fit all my necessary items into my normal-sized backpack. This backpack can fit a lot of things, but it’s not the type of backpack that people normally take on hiking, camping, or backpacking trips. It was a stretch, but I managed to do it. Then if I could just find a sensible place to store my rolling suitcase, I would be all right.

At first, I thought I might take a whole day out of Oxford and go up to Edinburgh, pay to store my stuff until I return there (near the end of my trip), and then go back to Oxford. As I looked at train times, it quickly became evident that this might not even be possible. Instead, I decided to call my second cousin Anna (with whom I will be staying later on in my trip), and she graciously agreed to let me store my suitcase with her. She lives in Manchester, and the train there was only about three hours each way instead of six. It was really fun to get to see her, and we had a nice chat for several hours.

So now, I do not have to deal with a huge, heavy suitcase for the majority of my time in hostels. I’m leaving Oxford tomorrow to stay in a Bristol hostel, and then I’ll be staying in a hostel in Wales. After that, I stay with Anna in Manchester, and then I’ll be staying with a couple who live in Durham (my former boss from CBE knows them). Then I’ll be heading to Edinburgh, where I’m staying in a hotel! After that, I’ll be in a Dublin hostel for a night, a Sligo hostel for two nights, then back to the Dublin hostel. I’ll see if I can store my extra suitcase in the Dublin hostel for the nights I go to Sligo. And then I’ll be flying to Washington, D.C., for a weekend to visit my friend Ann who is interning there in the autumn. And after that, I’ll go back to Minnesota.

I spent all of today wandering around Oxford, which was SO fun! I bought a booklet with a self-guided Tolkien/Lewis walking tour. While on the train yesterday, I inserted some other Oxford attractions in their ‘proper’ locations. So I saw the colleges where Tolkien and Lewis were undergraduates and where they were professors, I saw various churches/chapels that were important to them, and I saw several pubs (including the famous Eagle and Child, where I ate lunch) where they and their friends in ‘the Inklings’ writing/discussion group used to meet. Ann is always asking me if I can sense the presence of the authors when I visit their homes or whatever, and I just have to say that I really could at the Eagle and Child. The pub is a little touristy, with pictures of the Inklings on the walls of the ‘Rabbit Room,’ but it’s not too bad. In general, it’s still a pub that’s probably set up fairly similarly to how it was when the Inklings used to visit it. I sat at a two-person table in the Rabbit Room and kept imagining them reading and arguing over literature and their writing at one of the two 6-person tables in the small room. I also imagined them laughing at me for drinking a pint of strawberry cider instead of beer. :-) Later today, I walked along Addison’s Walk, where Lewis and Tolkien had their famous ‘Christianity as a true myth’ discussion that partially caused Lewis’s conversion.

In addition to these Tolkien/Lewis sights, I took a group guided tour of the Bodleian library, which was interesting although there are a lot of parts that only ‘readers’ (i.e. library-card holders) can go. And we didn’t get to see the underground book tunnels, which would have been amazing! But we saw Duke Humfrey’s Library, which has a ton of old books and has been a filming location in two Harry Potter movies. We also saw the Divinity School, which was where two Protestant martyrs (Latimer and someone else) had a pre-trial. (This was also used in the Harry Potter movies, as the hospital.) We saw a couple legal rooms as well, including one where Oscar Wilde came to plead his case when he was in debt. I tried to go to the Pitt Rivers Museum, but I was really disappointed because it is closed for renovation until the spring. It’s supposed to be a really crazy/weird museum, unlike anything else I’ve seen. And an alternate version of this museum was in The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. So it would have been cool to see. I also saw Christ Church College, which is Oxford’s largest college and has (surprise, surprise) also been featured in Harry Potter movies. I feel like I saw a TON of the city and the university by doing this walking tour. Even though I went to these places because of their connection with various writers/films, I appreciated them for their history and architecture (not that I know a lot about architecture) as well. And of course, I also saw famous buildings like the Radcliffe Camera, the Sheldonian, and the Bridge of Sighs.

I’m planning to finish up the walking tour tomorrow (I just have a little bit left), try to visit the New College (built in the 1300s, haha) cloisters again (they were also a Harry Potter film location), possibly eat lunch in the Turf (another Inklings pub and one that was recommended to me by my fellow intern at Anthem Press who studied at Oxford for a year), and then take a train to Bristol in the early afternoon.

**A note from my present self: I am now in Bristol, and the hostel is also quite nice. I spent the morning in Oxford and the afternoon here. I went to their science museum, and it was really good! There is a planetarium there, which I sadly did not get to go to because it was all sold out for the day. I also didn't know too much about the city of Bristol, but it's very nice. I wish I had more time to explore it, but I'm taking day trips for the rest of my time here. Which I am ridiculously excited about. I'm going to Stratford-upon-Avon tomorrow, Glastonbury on Friday, and East Coker (a T.S. Eliot site) on Saturday. On Sunday morning, I leave for Wales!