Banbury; Sunday, 19 May, 2013

Another late breakfast, and taking it almost to the wire with checkout time I left my bags with the hotel and wandered back into Oxford for the day.

I went on a very interesting walking tour round some of the Colleges and the Bodleian Library before heading over to the castle to have a look round that.

After going on a tour of the castle, and taking in the views from the top of the original Norman mound I caught the open-top bus back to the station and headed back to Banbury.

Of course, if this had been Germany there would have been left-luggage lockers at the station where I could have stored my bag during the day so that I could then have picked it up and gone straight out on the next train, but unfortunately it isn’t (though the train company is owned by Deutsche Bahn!) so instead I had a 15 minute walk across town to pick up my bags, and then walk the 15 minutes back to pick up the train.

I’d thought by going for a train around 6pm that had started in Birmingham might have made it a little emptier than if I’d gone for the slightly later one that would have started in Stratford-upon-Avon shortly after Shakespeare museum kicking out time. It probably was, but it didn’t feel that way as I squeezed myself into the last window seat for the journey back.

At the next and final stop, Bicester the heaving platforms confirmed that the train back was going to be as cosy as the train out.