My daughter, La Belfille, will be arriving at Heathrow in the morning and needs to get to Oxford by mid-afternoon. She is traveling alone and will not be met by anyone so she needs to figure out the best way to transport herself and a fair amount of luggage. We know there is a train and a bus, but little more than that. Any suggestions? And please be specific–where do you catch the bus? How much does the train cost? All advice is welcome. She’s never been abroad and I confess I’m a tiny bit nervous.
The luggage sounds like it might be an interesting problem if travelling alone on the train - are we talking about more than can be carried by a person without some kind of a trolley?
Don’t try to use the underground if you have more luggage than you can carry/drag all at once - it will go horribly wrong. You can manage this on buses and conventional trains, but not the tube.
Mangetout, she’ll have a large wheeled bag and no doubt a backpack or other carry-on, but it will have to be something she can manage herself without a porter or other assistance.
ianzin, I agree that the train is probably the best idea. Thanks for the links!
Obviously, she won’t have much difficulty getting around, regardless of the option. Any advice about Oxford itself? Tips, insider advice? She’ll be spending the term at Hertford.
I have to agree with suranyi about the bus being the best option in this case. It’s frequent, cheaper than the train, and from Heathrow to Hertford College is almost door-to-door.
If she takes the train then she would still need to get from Oxford Railway Station to Hertford, but if she takes the bus and gets off at the High Street / Queen’s Lane stop (the penultimate stop, according to this map from suranyi’s link), she’s less than a quarter-mile walk from Hertford. Just walk West along High Street (same direction as the bus), then turn right on Catte Street. Flat all the way, and a perfect introduction to Oxford – much better than arriving at the out-of-the-way and non-photogenic railway station and paying for a cab (or walking over a mile…).
Hope she has a great time! If she’s at Hertford, much of it will probably be spent in the Turf, mere inches away.
Thank you, all. Great information. I knew this was the place to come! I know she’ll have a great time–she’s been working toward this since she was a child.
If you don’t mind me asking, what is her field of study?
I envy her the “first-timer” experience!
She will have flown across the Atlantic, arrived at Heathrow (a boring modern airport), taken the direct bus along motorways and have seen almost nothing that will be out of the ordinary for her, until a couple of minutes before she gets off the bus at High St / Queens Lane. Then she will unload her bags, and suddenly realize that – although she is beside a major thoroughfare of a thriving city – almost every building within eyesight is several hundred years old and chock-full of history…
I hope that the experience manages to live up to her long-held expectations!
nthing the bus. It is a bit overpriced (there are far cheaper ways to do it – tube into London then megabus to oxford) but the bus is the right combo of convenience and price.
Because of all the cobbled streets, wheeled suitcases can be a horrible pain in Oxford. It will cost 5 pounds or more, but it might be worth hailing a taxi from the bus stop to hertford.
There should be signs to the bus to oxford at heathrow.
Make sure that she has some UK cash. Because US bank and credit cards are primitive (no chip and pin) some places will (wrongly) refuse to take them – though I doubt that will be a problem at heathrow.
At Oxford, tell her not to just hang around with the other Americans, if she is just studying abroad. The packs of Americans used to annoy us muchly.
Seconding all this. From my time studying there (10 years ago–eek!), this is all great advice. I spent much time with other Americans (and other expats) and wish I’d tried harder to make friends with some of those reserved English folk.
Also, the English taxi system (especially in London) is far superior to that in America.
My wife works (in the USA) for a firm based in Oxford. She goes there once or twice each year. She flies into Heathrow and then takes a train to Oxford. She’s usually bringing along one big bag (with wheels) and a laptop.
If she has a US-based debit card, she should be able to get cash out of an ATM at Heathrow. However, the last couple of times that I’ve been in England, I had no problem using US-based credit cards without chip-and-PIN.
One of my wife’s coworkers recently told us this story…
She and her husband (who live in Oxford) were vacationing in the USA. They stopped at someplace in New England and took a tour of some colonial village there. The tour guide took them through many historical places. At one point he stopped at an historical building and proudly exclaimed that this building was over two hundred and fifty years old.
…at which point she and her husband were mystified. As she put it “our house is over three hundred years old…”
Trouble is that there is no direct train to Oxford – you either need to get the ‘railair’ bus to reading and get on a train (included in the train ticket), or go into london and change at paddington.
She’s been dreaming of this since she first read Tolkien as a child (we’re huge Tokien geeks) and began delving into his life. She earned an International Baccalaureate diploma and although she ultimately decided to go to an American college, she always planned to study abroad at Oxford or do post-graduate work there. She’s an English and Women’s Studies major and plans to go to law school. Her senior thesis is a feminist reading of Tolkien’s ouvre. Interestingly, there was no tutor who could work with her on Tolkien, probably because he’s not considered part of the canon, so she’s studying Shakespear and the Victorians at Hertford.
There’s no way the experience can’t fulfill her expectations! I envy her a little as well!
She’s quite independent and fully immerses herself in new experiences–if anything, she’ll become annoyingly “faux-English” and be insufferable once she returns home. Ack, like Madonna’s British phase!
I spent a summer at Christ Church - great stuff, she’ll have a great time. Don’t skip punting on the Isis with Pims in hand. Also, the Oxford Botanical Gardens are great. And the dining hall at Christ Church served as the basis for the hall in Harry Potter, with the court outside being the basis for the Quinnage (sp?) court. Of course, Christ Church was the inspiration for Through the Looking Glass, with some pretty cool stories. In fact, with all of the history in that city, getting a good tour with an informative guide is well worth it.
