About my tours
In 2012, I shall have completed 20 years of guiding in Oxford. As more and more people from across the world have have poured in to see the historic and fascinating university, I have seen colleges react and visiting them has become more difficult and specialised. Many of the gatekeepers have known me for years, and know that I will not abuse their hospitality. This is one advantage of having an experienced, respected guide. You see more.
Topics for discussion have also changed, partly due to the accumulation of knowledge, partly because around the apparently calm centre of the university swirl new challenges. Higher education funding, the influence of the internet, political and financial pressure, privatisation, all are relevant. Guiding in one respect never changes, it always demands sensitivity to the interests of visitors, and the ability to see familiar views as though for the first time. However I never under-estimate the intelligence of those with me, and set out to challenge them with new ideas, as well as informing them, and occasionally making them laugh with a 20 year fund of anecdotes.
I do not have personal obsessions that I am determined to impose on you, but here are a few of many questions to which you might find the answer fascinating
Who climbed a 13th century bell tower?
Where is a fatal porch?
South Africans Rhodes and Dunn, who is the most important?
Who said what comes round every 76 years?
What unpleasant student sat in a tree?
What cheerful cat sat in a tree?
When was it useful to know how to weigh your head?
Who survived a 3-hour hanging?
Where is a famous father buried over his son?
Why were pilchards important to Oxford?
For what do we blame Steven Spielberg?
What poor dark girl got lucky?
Each answer comes with an account of the fascinating events around them.
When I started, my presentation was based on some perhaps good historical books, and the Blue-Badge training. It is certainly not that now, and never will be. The authorities have no interest in regulating guiding, so anyone can set up a website or a board in the street, read a guidebook and take unwary visitors around. Not only 'can' but do. You pay little more for experience and quality, and you really do get better tours..
Other tours
Special interest subjects
American Roots: Architecture: Oxford and Religion: Literature, Films and TV: Science, Medicine and Engineering: Tudor Period. My book 'The Oxford of Inspector Morse' is available in local bookshops and Amazon.
Evening tours
Oxford is beautiful later in the day, throughout the seasons. After dark many of the great buildings are floodlit, the old taverns thronged with students and visitors. Although colleges are usually closed, it is still advantageous to have small groups, as it is often possible to stand in gatehouses and look into quadrangles, and the taverns and alleys leading to them are often crowded.
Conferences
These are popular both for delegates, usually in the evening, and for non-participants, possibly in the day. Organisers often are unable to predict the number wishing to attend, and I am used to adapting to this.
Surrounding countryside
I can accompany you in your car to the beautiful villages and country houses and spectacular gardens of The Cotswold Hills, the Chiltern Hills, and the Thames Valley
