Four Day-Trips from Oxford, England (Winchester, Stonehenge, Blenheim Palace, & Portsmouth)
It’s at about this time every year that I get horribly nostalgic. Facebook and Instagram are flooded with those “remember what you were doing X years ago” posts—all photos from my time studying abroad in Oxford, England, three years ago. It’s not so much wanderlust that compels me to be mopey and stare at my Oxford photos for an hour at this time of the year; it’s missing the quotidien of living in another place, the same melancholy I get thinking about Kentucky now that I’m in Minnesota. It’s missing eating Nando’s at least once a week, going to lectures in beautifully old stone buildings crawling with ivy, hot chocolate and millionaire’s shortbread from Caffé Nero, the Marston footpath being flooded from the relentless rain, and waiting for my creative writing tutorial on a bench beside the river.
It’s true that living in another place, even only for a semester, versus traveling to that place will make your time there vastly different, as your level of cultural sensitivity will shape your experiences—either positively or negatively. No matter where I travel abroad in the future, England will always be different to me for that reason, and I know that every time I go back will always feel a little bit like coming home.
To that end, to stave off the intense nostalgia (and to resist buying an impulsive plane ticket to London), I’ve decided to comb through my Oxford memories and reminisce on four of my favorite day trips we took to different spots around England. I was at Oxford to study (my program had me writing at least one essay every week—it wasn’t one of those study-abroad deals that’s more like a glorified vacation), so these trips are geared towards learning about British history and culture and are perhaps a little off the beaten path.
1. Winchester (1 hr from Oxford)
The city of Winchester, in the south of England, is most famous for Winchester Cathedral, which has the longest nave and overall length of all Gothic cathedrals in Europe. The crypt of the cathedral frequently floods, and a haunting statue can be seen staring at its reflection in the water. Jane Austen is also buried in Winchester Cathedral (she was brought to Winchester for treatment shortly before her death, and it is not where she resided most of her life). It is here where you can see the stone epitaph composed by her brother James, which makes no mention of her achievements as a talented author since this was a period when women were not expected to succeed independently within the social sphere.
Another landmark in Winchester is Winchester Castle, its Great Hall maintained in the same condition as when it was built sometime between 1222 and 1235. King Arthur’s Round Table (not the real thing, as it’s dated too late) has been hanging in the hall since 1463, and in 1522, it was painted for King Henry VIII.
The last point of interest where we stopped in our day in Winchester was the Hospital of St. Cross. This medieval almshouse is the oldest surviving charitable institution in the United Kingdom, and it was founded by Henry of Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror, in 1136.
Poet John Keats composed his ode, “To Autumn,” while visiting Winchester in 1819, and the poem seems strangely to connect this current moment in a thawing Minnesota with this trip to Winchester three years ago (what I remember as one of the first sunny days of spring):
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
2. Old Sarum, Stonehenge, and Uffington White Horse (1 hr from Oxford)
For this road trip (we took a bus—you’d definitely need your own transportation to see these things, as they’re not very close to one another), we started at Old Sarum, an Iron Age hill fort, established in about 400 BC. Old Sarum served as a strategic point in the Roman road network and was an ideal army base in the early stages of the Norman Conquest by William the Conqueror. Then, in 1075, a cathedral was constructed there, then in the 1220s, it was moved to Salisbury and Old Sarum was abandoned. You can walk the outer edges of the hill, paths worn smooth by time, and see the ruins of the castle and cathedral standing in the verdant grass.
Our next stop was Stonehenge, an iconic prehistoric monument. While most people think immediately of the stone circle, the earliest construction at the site was a circular ditch with an inner and outer bank, built about 3000 BC. Inside this are the Aubrey Holes, where people buried cremations. In about 2500 BC, the iconic stones were first set up in the center of the monument. The great trilithon, the encompassing horseshoe arrangement of the five central trilithons, the heel stone, and the embanked avenue, are aligned to the sunset of the winter solstice and the opposing sunrise of the summer solstice. While there are many legends surrounding Stonehenge, there is no consensus among researchers as to what its function was or how it was constructed.
Our last site on this tour was the Uffington White Horse, a prehistoric hill figure created by trenches filled with white chalk. It is the oldest of the white horse figures in Britain, dating to the late Bronze Age (1000-700 BC) and is of an entirely different design from the others inspired by it. The horse is thought to represent a tribal symbol perhaps connected with the builders of Uffington Castle and is similar to horses depicted on Celtic coinage, the currency of the pre-Roman-British population, though another theory links it to solar alignment (like Stonehenge) and possible connections to the mythological belief that the sun was carried across the sky on a horse or in a chariot.
3. Blenheim Palace (20 min. from Oxford)
Blenheim Palace is the principal residence of the Dukes of Marlborough, the only non-royal, non-episcopal country house in England to hold the title of palace, and it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. It is the ancestral home and birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, and its history is fraught in political and social strife (as is the case with most old, rich European families). The architecture of the palace is in the short-lived English Baroque style, controversial due to its extravagance. Now, Blenheim Palace unique in its combined use as a family home, mausoleum and national monument.
If you take the bus to Woodstock and walk to the palace, you’ll get an idea of the picturesque views of the English countryside: tranquil fields of grazing sheep, stone cottages with flooded yards and waddling ducks, and gorgeous old stone bridges.
Portsmouth (1 hr 30 min. from Oxford)
Portsmouth was a significant naval port for centuries and both had the world’s oldest dry dock and the world’s first mass production line (making it the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution). Now, the city is considered the home of the Royal Navy and is home to two-thirds of the UK’s surface fleet. When visiting Portsmouth, you can tour the HMS Victory, the world’s oldest naval ship still in commission, and even stand on the decks (and if you’re a weirdo like me, pretend to be a pirate).
Portsmouth is a treasure trove of museums and landmarks relating to its long military history. Southsea Castle was one we visited while there, a Tudor-era seafront defense constructed by Henry VIII. You can also visit the birthplace of Charles Dickens at Mille End Terrace, or one of the city’s many war memorials.
Writing this has actually had the opposite effect of what I intended, and now I really want to go back to England. Who wants to come with me?
Thanks for reading! If you liked this post, hit the heart button down below!