Oxford City Centre
Oxfordshire
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Featured Location Guide |
Oxford City centre is a maze of streets with lots of small
back streets and really impressive large buildings, most making up different
parts of the University of Oxford, and within
short walking distances you come across plenty to photograph. If you know Oxford a little then like us you
could make up your own tour taking in the main highlights or alternatively
Oxford has guided walking tours running 365 days a year, from an introductory
tour through to themed tours. These are limited to 19 people and take around 2
hours.
On the day of our visit we went via train. The
railway station is a little walk from the centre, but walking from there you get
to see some new glass fronted buildings and walk over the canal. As we had
visited Oxford a number of times and had the children with us we put together
our own tour which took in some of the landmarks of Oxford for us to photography
as well as a visit to the Museum of Natural History for the children. On arrival
we headed towards the main shopping centre and after walking up the main high street we walked down St Aldgates, past Christ
Church, were the Alice in Wonderland secret garden is hidden.
Click on images to see larger
versions
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Continuing our walk through some of the spiders web of
back streets passing the Bridge of Sighs, an archway which crosses a road
joining two buildings part of the Old and New Quads of Hertford College on
either side. |
Radcliffe Camera building
Note: This is a challenging building to photograph because it is in the
centre of a square of buildings and therefore the correct lens, position and
lighting combination is required. |
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Oxford
University Museum of Natural History.
Inside it contains various
collections of entomological, palaeontological, zoological and mineral
specimens which have been collected over the last 3 centuries. |
Outside the museum in the grass is a reconstruction of giant
Megalosaurus footprints in the grass, which as the picture shows fill up
with water in a rainstorm. |
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Inside there were dinosaur skeletons, which
forms part of their permanent display and includes 4 species from
Oxfordshire. The two largest dinosaurs of their collection stand in the
centre of the main gallery and is the first thing you see as you walk in
the main entrance. |
There are many skeletons on the ground floor as well as the
large dinosaur collection, there are these skeletons of different animals.
The two large ones at the back are elephants and a giraffe, the one at the
front on the left is a tiger. |
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We also took a look around
the Pitt Rivers Museum, founded by General Pitt Rivers in 1884. Spread over 3 galleried floors
jam packed display cases contain all manor of objects giving an illustration of how humans
have lived over time. Over a quarter of a million
objects including amulets, pots, shrunken heads, tools, musical instruments,
jewellery, canoes, textiles, weapons, masks a large display of body art and
body manipulation. An Aladdin's cave of all sorts of stuff.
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| There is so much
on offer in Oxford that you cannot get all of it done in one day and it is a
place you can go back to many times and see different treasures, both big
and bold and small. From buildings to flora and fauna. It can be visited at
any time of year and the different lighting conditions from the different
seasons would give a different atmosphere to the photographs taken. |
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Location: Oxford City
Centre, Oxfordshire |
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Grid Reference: SP515061 |
Ceremonial County:
Oxfordshire |
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Map Link:
VIEW MAP
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Aerial photo: |
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Getting there: Can be reached
from M40 J 8 & 9 and M4 J13 and off the A40 |
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Access: Expensive
parking in the City Centre itself there are a number of park and ride areas
around. |
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Website:
www.visitoxford.org
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Notes: Things to do include:- Parks.
Museums. Architectural buildings, cobbled and small quaint streets. Guided
walking tours. Botanic Gardens. Different seasons giving different lighting
for the architecture and gardens.
Many eateries within the centre and there are public toilets around.
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