Saturday in Oxford

Divinity School, Bodleian Library

On Saturday, we first visited the CLEAR (Clinical Exercise and Rehabilitation) Unit at Oxford Brookes University. It's basically a cross between a hospital physio program, research unit, and gym. We met some of the professors/researchers/trainers, who were kind enough to come in on their day off to talk to us. We also met a client of theirs, who was in a motorcycle accident more than a decade ago; he suffered brain and spinal cord damage. He was dismissed from his hospital physio program after five years, still wheelchair-bound and paralyzed on one side, and was told that was the extent of his recovery and nothing more could be done for him. He started going to CLEAR a couple of years later, and now he can walk; he demonstrated for us. It's not a natural gait at all, but he never uses a wheelchair anymore and is thrilled to be walking at all. His goal is to complete a marathon in the next eight years. Very inspirational!

Afterwards, we had a walking tour of Oxford. Below are some photos from around the city:

Quadrangle of Lincoln College 

Statue of King James I partway up the archives tower of
the Bodleian Library

archives tower of the Bodleian Library. It's also called
the Tower of Five Orders, because it has 5 different
orders (styles) of columns, and so this building was
used as a teaching device.

The original home of the Oxford University Press, the Clarendon building.
The statues on top are the Nine Muses. 

The Bridge of Sighs (no connection to Venice) 

Filming site of hospital scenes from Harry Potter!

In the Divinity School. See the figure on the left that's missing a head?
It's St. Peter, regarded as the first Pope; his statue was beheaded during
England's break with the Catholic Church under the Tudors. The centre
enclave originally contained a crucifix, which was removed at the same
time for the same reason.

You can see the ancient city walls beyond the green!

Fun fact learned during the tour: Oxford was never bombed during WWII, and so many precious documents were moved there from London for safekeeping during the war. The guide said that there are two common explanations: 1) Hitler wanted Christ Church college as a summer house, and 2) England had a reciprocal agreement with Germany not to bomb Heidelberg (Oxford's German equivalent, in that both were university towns). Both of these seem unlikely to me, and Google isn't being helpful. Has anyone ever heard of this? From what I can tell (and evidenced by seeing the buildings) the part about Oxford mostly or entirely escaping bombing is true.