Sunny dreaming spires with Whitehorse and Roosters

Location: Learning central

My favourite library the Bod (est. 1598) where I once swore not to "kindle therein, any fire or flame"


Moodmusic: So nice to get hot and sweaty and feel the heat of summer


Today's memories and soundbites
My third visit to Oxford this year.  Music and dancing previously, but took a friend on the tourist trail this weekend.  Started with sunny Friday night sitting out, and then hot sunny blue sky day today wandering the very busy city full of graduating students and Spanish school children.  Popped in to some of my favourite mainstream haunts from times past.


Location: The Eagle and Child, St Giles 

Tolkein sat and wrote his tales in this pub, alongside chatting with his friend CS Lewis

Drink
1. Roosters, Welsummer (4.5%)
Reactions
Emotional.  Excellent! Yummy.
Critical. This is a beer brewed for the summer by Roosters and in partnership with - for - Nicholson's pubs.  It was described as a pale ale although it wasn't that pale to look at.  It was very interesting ..... lots of complex flavours from ingredients I wasn't sure I'd tasted before.  Well balanced complex and well rounded ale that leaves you wanting more.


Location: White Horse, Broad Street

Inspector Morse drank here

Drink
2. WhiteHorse, Whitehorse (3.7%)
Reactions
Emotional. Cooooooling down
Critical. Great swift half on a hot afternoon.  Could very easily be a session beer. Lively producing a smooth head, clean flavour, slightly floral and grassy.


Oxford view
Born in 1827 Pitt Rivers was an English army officer, ethnologist and archaeologist. He pushed forward new methods in collection and display.  The Pitt Rivers museum houses his and the University's anthropological collection.

Fish skin war helmet - natural battle armour 

War trophies - shrunken heads from PNG

"How do they get the heads that small?" "Hours of rubbing with hot pebbles apparently"


University Natural History museum, site of the great debate on natural evolution in 1860 in a clash between the church and science about whether or not Darwin got it right.  Without this amazing event Darwin's theory may not have been pushed forward or attained credibility and the church may have continued to tell scientists what it was they were allowed to conclude from their work.

The University Botanic Garden has some amazing plants including this jade vine from the Philippines, which looked like something plastic from another planet