The weather threatened rain but it didn't. On the journey there we had an interesting aside. The main A40 had a traffic jam so we followed the sat nav which took us on a back road and to a toll bridge.
It had us scrambling for coins - not because of the cost but because of the lack of it. Would you believe that the fee to get over the bridge was 5p. Yes that's correct 5p. And they had two men collecting the money. Now who has 5p in these days of hyper inflation?
The bridge is at Swinford and is over the Thames. It is privately owned and just above Eynsham Lock. It carries the B4044 road between Oxford and Eynsham. This was the main A 40 until the Eynsham bypass was completed in 1936.
We have been to Oxford on numerous occasions, so once again looked for an historic coffee shop which claims that it is the oldest coffee shop in Europe and there may be some truth in this.
It's the Queen's Lane Coffee Shop in (not surprisingly) Queen's Lane. It claims to have been in existence since 1654 and this is technically true except for the fact that it hasn't always been in this location. This is what Wikipedia has to say on the subject.
Queen's Lane Coffee House is an historic coffee house established by Cirques Jobson, a Levantine Jew from Syria. Dating back to 1654, it claims to be the oldest continually serving coffee house in Europe, although it has only been on the present site since 1970. The coffee house is where Jeremy Bentham first developed the concept of utilitarianism.
It doesn't say where the coffee shop was before 1970 but other sites suggest it was on the corner of Queen's Lane. So we can safely assume that it's been in Oxford since 1654. I bet in those days they didn't have a sign saying "no laptops at the weekend." I bet they didn't serve skinny lattes either.
Most of the colleges were as usual closed to the public but I hope you enjoy some of my general pictures of the city which I have posted before I look up what utilitarianism is!