Mummy Diaries | A family trip to Oxford

Sunday 2 September 2018

Oxford is a city I’ve always wanted to go to and I’m not sure why... I mean I’ve been to Oxfordshire a few times and stayed in the Cotswolds and also visited the Kassam, seeing the Bees on the road, but I’ve never seen actual Oxford. Thankfully, it’s not too far from us – just under an hour – and Ash decided we make an afternoon of it. We had to be back for our anniversary meal at Blue Orchid.

I made packed lunches for the three of us in advance, as I knew Alfie’s lunchtime would be pretty imminent. After getting the bag ready, we set off for the Park & Ride at Seacourt (highly recommend, btw. It was around £6 which works out cheaper than parking in the city centre and it’s only five minutes on the bus to Oxford Castle).

The castle was where we got off and had we not got the stroller, we’d have certainly looked round – at the mound, at the very least. Within the Castle Quarter are bars and restaurants, so we wouldn’t have gone hungry, either. But there’s also plenty to do and see, as it’s a castle and prison! If you didn’t want to pay admission to see it all, you could pay £2 to access the mound (locked by coded gate), but it really wasn’t baby/buggy friendly and I saw parents struggling! We’ll definitely return when Alfie is bigger and appreciates it all a bit more. It was nice eating our picnics on a bench in the sunshine, though. We must have had the right idea, as another family moved the bench next to ours to the other side, in the shade, and also tucked in.

From the castle, we made our way into the city centre for a spot of shopping. Ash was on the search for running shoes and he’d enclosed a Body Shop voucher in my anni card – which was spent very quickly! Shopping is thirsty work and a pub pit-stop was required. The Three Goats Heads was certainly full of character (and that extends to the staff); slightly dated but very quaint. I had a lovely organic cherry beer... as good as Belgium!

We also sauntered the side streets and found ourselves amongst the colleges, which were incredibly busy with tourists taking selfies. For a small fee, you could even go inside them. Needless to say, we didn’t stay long – and I have no idea what I photographed, but it looked beautiful and appeared to be quite popular! Instead, the Covered Market called... it was somewhere I’d seen on Google and thought it’d be a bit of fun. Unfortunately, I was so disappointed when I realised it was nothing like Borough Market (was praying for lot of yummy food and samples) and being a Sunday, most of the shops were closed anyway! There was a gorgeous little milkshake place, which caught my eye – but that was about it!

We had another pub pit-stop and mooch around the shops, ending the day at the Westgate Shopping Centre. Sticks n Sushi and Dirty Bones are two restaurants on my must-eat-at list and seeing as I don’t go into London much anymore, another visit to Oxford most definitely calls.

Love, Lucy xx

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