An Outing to the Shire

The lazy days in Oxford continue! The academic year does start back up in around two weeks, and this year's class of incoming Rhodies is starting to arrive (how'd that happen? time flies!). More and more friends are back in town, and we've been trying to take advantage of the still-pleasant weather before the sun forsakes us for a few months. On that note, a friend and I made a fun all-day sojourn out to the Cotswolds one day this past week, which was like visiting our own little corner of the Shire. We took a train out half an hour from Oxford, then disembarked in a tiny adorable town full of midday markets and elderly British people, and after grabbing lunch at a tea parlor in town we headed out on a walk through the fields and scenery surrounding the area.

The country paths around here ramble through an assortment of fields, privately owned by farmers, and we made it through a series of gates and also made a couple of cow friends along the way.

All the tiny villages we passed were quaint, hobbit-sized, and charming. I didn't get photos of any of the houses, many of which had thatch roofs, but here's one of the churches we passed:

And an idyllic field, complete with fall leaves and a couple of sleek mares and their foals lounging in the grass. Again, good company, good weather, and this kind of day: what more could I ask for? I've realized that in recent weeks Oxford is finally feeling more like home. The house is contributing to that, for sure, but so are deepening friendships and a sense of camaraderie and adventure in this quirky little isle.

I'll have more quirkiness to report soon, since I'm off in less than an hour to attend a Stanford black-tie gala dinner at a royal palace in London, but that will be a story for my next post. (I'll try to brush up on my curtsying before then, don't worry.)

Blenheim Palace International Horse Trials!

I've been quiet on this blog lately, but that's because things have been pleasantly quiet in Oxford for the last two weeks. Friends, decent weather, dinner parties, and plenty of reading and writing have all figured into my day-to-day activities, and actually not much else. For the first time this summer, I feel like I've gotten the chance to unwind.

That said, I did get to go to Blenheim Palace, not far from Oxford, this past Saturday to attend the annual International Horse Trials held there, another foray into British equestrian tourism! The horse trials take the form of a CCI*** and CIC*** event held on Blenheim's lovely grounds over the weekend, with many top riders from around the world attending to compete on their up-and-coming horses (as well as many regional riders trying their hand with their mounts at a three-star event). As I should not need to point out to the readers of this blog, any kind of horsey event in a beautiful setting immediately launches me into my own version of heaven. One of my friends and housemates in Oxford wound up going along with me, and she had the enviable task of getting to listen to my nonstop horse chatter all day long. I'd never gotten to watch the cross-country portion of a big event before, so we wandered along the entire course, saw some big names like William Fox-Pitt and Pippa Funnell and Philip Dutton gallop by, ogled at the many adorable dogs people had also brought to the event, did some shopping in which my pent-up equestrian apparel obsessions surfaced, and then watched a pretty sketch high-jump challenge and a few CIC*** show jumping rounds before heading back to Oxford and calling it a day.

Good weather, good company, and horses: always my recipe for happiness in this world. And yes, I do realize how many posts on this blog involve horses even though I am no longer riding as much as I used to... cheers to the country life!

Wild and Wonderful Wales

Well, I made it back out to Wales -- not to Cardiff, as I did this past fall with my friend Reagan, but a bit farther north in St. Davids, officially the smallest city in the UK. (For those who don't know, in the UK a "town" is officially called a "city" as long as it has a cathedral, and the cute seaside settlement of St. Davids is itty bitty with 2000 people but has a big old stone Romanesque cathedral, so there ya go.) My Oxford friend Paul has been doing field work and research out at a farm in Wales this summer, and visiting him was the perfect excuse to make it out to see the famed Welsh coast.

The trip out to St. Davids from Oxford is long and a bit tedious, since it involves three separate trains and a bus ride for a combined travel time of around six or seven hours, whereas the drive (if I had a car) would be a few hours shorter than that. The UK is not that big, people! But the trip out on Friday was a good time to devour my way through a book, though it did come with its share of stress when I missed one of my connecting trains and, as a result, only barely made the last bus out to St. Davids for the day... (and by barely, I mean with only a minute to spare.) I did make it, though, and met Paul in town and enjoyed a pub meal before walking back down the road to the farm where he is staying and working. The next morning we got up, enjoyed breakfast, and headed out to the fields around the farm to see some impossibly adorable Welsh ponies.

I mean, can you get much cuter than this?? My horse-deprived self was in full-blown AWWWW FUZZY, GIMME mode, and I enjoyed hanging out in the field for an hour or so, smelling Welsh wildflowers as the horses scoped me out. Paul's research focuses on insects, particularly dung beetles that help, well, decompose the horse and cow manure lying around the fields of the farm, so our walk out to see the horses involved lots of stopping to inspect fresh piles of dung for little beetle friends. Paul successfully convinced me, during the trip, that dung beetles can be pretty neat and even cute, but as he wandered off to search for more dung-burrowing specimens, I opted to be smitten with ponies instead.

These guys just live out in a field, so they were skittish of letting me get too close, but man were they curious about what I was doing. Cute Welsh pony ears and shaggy manes abounded.

Lunchtime arrived too quickly, and we walked back to the farmhouse, and I asked Paul some questions about his beetles and the experiments he's running to determine what environmental factors and farming practices affect their ability to do their pooper-scooper job. And look, the big ones are even fuzzy and (I admit) cute:

Okay, that's enough talk of poop. We grabbed sandwiches for lunch, then walked back into town to do some exploring. See here, some ruins of a Catholic monastery (dissolved and destroyed, along with many others in England, when Henry VIII converted the country to Protestantism), as well as the aforementioned cathedral of St. David's. Which was really neat inside -- Romanesque architecture and Norman/Anglo-Saxon styles, instead of the usual Gothic arches, with restored wooden ceilings painted as they would have been in early medieval times. It's one of the most unique cathedrals I'd seen, though I haven't had the chance to see many this old, pre-Gothic, I guess.

We then caught a bus down the coast to one of the most scenic parts of Wales -- the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, a national trail that winds along the southwest Welsh coast for almost 200 miles. It features scenic cliffs, dramatic hills, beaches, and stunning views out to the sea. I've missed hiking along the coast, and especially hiking with any kind of elevation gain or view, so this was a welcome change from the quaint rolling hills and flat plains of most of England.

The wildflowers the entire weekend were lovely, as well, and Paul (being a biologist) pointed them out to me along the way. He knew the name of every single flower, as well as every single insect, we passed, and I wish I'd been able to absorb his knowledge.

I could have hiked the coast path all day, but we wound up back in St. Davids by evening, went out for a pub dinner with Paul's supervisor and a few other people from the farm, and then headed to bed. The next day, after getting up and walking into town for a classic English breakfast, we bused out to another spot along the coast and hiked up to get a better view of the ocean. It was a gorgeous day and there were ponies on the cliffs this time, and more wildflowers, really absolutely picturesque.

Before we headed back into town, where we'd been invited to attend lunch with my friend's supervisor and her family at her mother's lovely, lovely house in St. Davids, we had to take some photos from on top of the bluff. The colors under that sky were amazing, and I'm so glad the weather cooperated.

Lunch was wonderful, as the entire family invited us into their home for an expansive meal, including wine and elderflower/grape cordial and tea/coffee after the dessert course. The lunch was to celebrate the 97th birthday of the family's great-aunt, and everyone was so welcoming (even if they'd never met me before) and the meal was one of the most delicious I've had in a while. People's hospitality can be truly amazing sometimes. And afterwards, we headed back to the farm to digest our food for a few hours, then I headed out in the evening upon Paul's supervisor's invitation to play with horses on the ground out in the fields for a good hour or so. Ah, to scratch withers and manes and smell that horsey smell again, out in a wide open field with the autumn sun setting through the clouds. 'Twas a great escape from Oxford!