Our first stop was to visit friends of my parents - John & Jean Lynam; John was a teacher and boarding house master at The Dragon School with my father back in the mid 1960's, and after a phone call had invited us around for morning tea; we spent a wonderful two hours with this lovely couple at their home, catching them up on the family. Afterwards, John drove us into the city, which was lovely, and gave us directions for catching the bus back to their place afterwards, where we had left the car for the day.
We decided to complete the walking tour of the city that we had started the previous day, so headed off for a couple of hours on a path that took us through the main city centre and past a number of colleges.
The Church of St Michael's at the North Gate has a Saxon tower, dating to approximately 1040 AD, making it the oldest building in Oxford; as it was possible to climb the tower, we did so, for some more panoramic, central views of Oxford, like this one:
![Picture](/uploads/1/7/5/3/17530009/6790661.jpg)
Our path took us under the so-called "Bridge of Sighs", as its shape is reminiscent of the bridge of the same name in Venice.
We had booked a few nights at Risley, a small village near Derby, north of Oxford, so it was time to head off.
Why Derby? Firstly, we are making our way up north to Glasgow, which is where Kim is flying home from, and secondly Kim's mother (Pene) had reminded us that Derbyshire is the setting for Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice", and the location of many of the buildings used in the filming of the BBC series - so, all-in-all, it seemed like a good idea! We were able to book 3 nights at Risley Hall Hotel, set in an old manor house with an extension dating to the early 1900's with some suites - we were in a suite in the extension, and we're not sure if there has been much done to it since the early 1900's!