Trip to Oxford, Gover Wales and London June 2019

  Trip to Oxford, Gover Wales and London June 2019

Sat 8th We get to Ben Gurion airport to discover that EasyJet had technical problems and the plane was delayed .  In all our travels with EasyJet this is the first time we had a problem. They gave us all big sandwiches and bottles of water while we were waiting. Then we had to land in Milan to change crew as they are not allowed to work too many extra hours. So we got to Luton at 4am only 4 hours late and  when we walked into the airport hotel, people were starting to get up for breakfast.

 Took the 11am bus to Oxford and when we got there were not taxis as they were on Sunday lunch break, but luckily we knew how to find the bus to our hotel. We spent 5 nights in Oxford and spent most of the time at Brenda. We bought ready lunch and frozen food at  M&S and took it to Brenda. There is such a variety of good ready food and it does not cost much more than your own cooking . Later  Evan arrived and he ordered Lebanese take away for supper. We went with Brenda by bus to Oxford city and bought a supply of ready and frozen food for the week, the  supermarket Tesco , it exactly by her bus stop back home.

In Oxford city and bought clothes at M&S as we came with almost empty suitcases.  From Brenda we 3, took as bus to the "Plough" but I was not watching and the bus went past and we had to wait another 15 minutes in the cold for the next one. Then the bus stop was quite far away so it gave us, especially Brenda a good walk.  Evan and Emma arrived and joined us and drove us back to the flat.

Wednesday Brenda's friend's Hazel fetched us and took us to the Oxford synagogue  for  lunch with the pensioners who meet every week and a talk given by a member who is usually emeritus professor. This time he discussed  important aspects of WW2 and the beginning of the cold war.  Most of the listeners remember the Battle of Britain when they were kids and the rationing after the war. The Oxford shull is attractive to all Jews there, as they don't have a Rabbi and they have a constitution making it open, any who considers himself Jewish with Reform, Conservative and Orthodox services different Saturdays..  Afterwards I went to the Ashmonian Museum of Archaeology which has been refurbished and feels bigger than the last time I visited with Adam. It has a lot of material showing the extent of the Roman Empire, because both the land of  Israel and England were under the Roman Empire at the same time.

I then went to the Science Museum which has a collection of old laboratory equipment and instruments for calculating astronomy, and display of the research of penicillin which only became available for soldiers at he end of WW2.  A unique thing on display is a blackboard with a hand written formula by Einstein. This is from when he  visited Oxford in 1931 and they kept his chalk marks as they knew at the time how important a scientist he was.

While Astrid went shopping I went for a 2 hour walking tour about the collages of Oxford.  The guide has a degree in literature and history and he took us into Baliol Collage where he explained the collage system. Three Prime Ministers were at this collage and their portraits are up in the dinning room Asquith , Harold MacMillen and Edward Heath. If Boris Johnson becomes PM his portrait will also go up there. 

Adam Smith, Graham Green, Aldous Huxley the writers were at Baliol. Dame Vera "Steve" Shirley a kindertrain survivor and women who set up a high tech company and donated money to the collage has a portrait there. 

We  walked to the New library and passed the Bodleian library which has another building next to it that is used for graduations ceremonies and was designed by Christopher Wren. We were taken passed Merlot collage which is from the days of Edward1 King from 1272. There is also the Saxon building from before the Norman invasion.

There is the story of the English Civil War period when Oxford were royalist and gave shelter to Charles 1. The crises of Reformation and that Thomas Cramer was executed in Oxford. There is the building where the first Oxford press was and Tolkien(wrote the Hobbit) worked there on the Oxford dictionary as a philologist. Alice in Wonderland as was as C.S.Lewis's books were written in Oxford and many of Gerard Manley Hopkin's poems are about Oxford. Collages were closed at night when it was dangerous to be in the streets. Some collages were set up for men of a specific county. Cambridge opened when people broke away from Oxford.

14/6/19 Friday took a train from Oxford to Paddington Station and then to Swansea from where we took a taxi who pointed out where Dylan Thomas's home was. He took us to Llanrhidian a very small villiage.We stayed  3 nights in a loft flatlet in with our own entrance at the side of a house. It had a cupboard of crockery and a divider of  old Chinese  art but was very dusty.  From there we walked 2 km to the Gower Castle to the folk music festival was. The problem is walking on the side of the narrow country road and you have to push into the bushes when a car comes. Luckily we go a ride back to town all three nights and the organizers worried about us.

Saturday  we walked along the walk path to Gower Castle which is marked but not very well and  we got lost but luckily a lady was walking her dogs and led us on the way. It took an hour and a half and by the time we got there Astrid had done 100% of her days exercise.  Different groups sang continuously except for a supper break and it ended at 11.30pm.

Outstanding was Cohen Braitwaite who sang with an old concertina or accordion very old English workers songs or sea chanties. There was also a 5 piece women's band singing country music. The best was Canadian group of 4 men one played the fiddle and did amazing tap dancing like Riverdance or Fred Astaire.

One bus passes through Llanrhidian on a Sunday and goes past Gower castle and we waited and took it, we were his only passengers.  We listened to an amazing Scottish Gaelic group and then a Welsh group. Before the music started there was a folk dancing workshop and I tried to learn 2 French dances but never succeeded.

 Most people who came to this festival came in camper cars. Down below the castle is a bay with a salt marsh and at low tide the bay looks dry.  The farmers here have sheep that eat the greenery that grows in the salty water, when the farmer knows there will be a spring tide he brings the sheep up to a dry field. Astrid liked the taste of the salt marsh lamb.  The other thing we noticed was that there are lots of dog lovers and over 40 well behaved and quiet dogs were there.

16/8/19 Monday the owner of our flatlet had offered us a ride to Swansea station from where we got a train to Paddington and to Lionel and Minne in Bayswater London for 4 nights

We went to the Birkenstock shop to get sandals for Adam and later went out for scones and tea. That evening we took Lionel Minne and Tessa out for a meal at the Greek restaurant and ate too much.

  We walked to the Brands museum in Notting Hill. This has a collection of packaging going back to Victorian times, and you see how the logos changed over the years. Everything from biscuit tins, to radios, as well as a collection of toys and games. You had a display of magazine covers during the Beatle period, different transistor radios as well as fashion magazine. In the afternoon we went to the Savoy theatre where we saw a musical by Dolly Parton's "Nine to Five" Excellent musical with songs she wrote. While we were waiting to get in, a Rolls arrived at the Savoy Hotel and everyone was craning their necks to see if some celebrity got out.  

 We went to another matinée of the musical Hamilton. This has excellent singing and dancing about one of the early politicians who signed the Declaration of Independence but it is more like an opera and one needs to research the story to understand what the songs are about. When you get to the theater you go through security, then with you credit card they issue you with your ticket. This is to stop touters buying up blocks of tickets to sell for a profit. We were lucky Astrid booked far ahead as this musical is sold out for the season,

  Friday Slept late and were with Lionel and Minna  till we got the bus to Luton where we stayed at the hotel to be able to get up a 4.45am Sat. to get our flight home.

We were lucky that the weather was cool even cold and raining this did not worry us as we knew we would be returning to Israel to a sharav and  it is 29C at night.