Walking

Among the more peculiar British ideas is the notion that aimlessly walking around the countryside is a leisure activity. Thanks to some ridiculous Common Law traditions, there is an enormous network of public footpaths criss-crossing virtually every field. So basically it's like hiking in the US except without the wilderness and with quite a lot of sheep poop.


A little websearching informed me that I could join in the national pastime with the Oxford Walking Club on their outing to the Cotswolds (pretty hills ~30 miles from Oxford). We met at 9 am at the train station, rode to Moreton-in-Marsh, then started our walk. To make a long story short, I learned two important things:

1. Moreton-in-Marsh is appropriately named.
2. The weather really does suck.

To elaborate on the latter we had sun, pouring rain, more sun, a driving thunderstorm, a little snow, then more sun. Next time I'm certainly bringing my rain pants (trousers). We finished off the roughly 15 mile trek with a sprint to just barely catch the train.

We got to walk across our fair share of these muddy plowed fields.

Sunny Lunch Break

I got back to Oxford just in time to turn the pages at an excellent concert given by Clara, Nadine Levin, and Aaron Mertz. They played Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49. To say I was impressed would be a bit of an understatement. I had plenty of trouble just keeping up with the music to know when to turn the pages. It's a good thing they insisted that I show up and practice once last week.