Oxford, 2021, Very Briefly

Independence Day we spent getting to Oxford, lunch there and a little sightseeing, and then ever onward toward our main goal, Wells. 

Harry Potter stores rule High Street, Main Street, Broad Street,
etc.; important sets, scenes for the Potter movies were shot here

In the Old Market

Our favorite restaurant in Oxford is Chiang Mai--
thank you, Rebecca--wait a second, didn't we go to
cooking school in Chiang Mai?

Restaurant menu with a building history, and an

interesting history too (click to enlarge)

Satay

Tom Yum, my favorite

Her pad thai

Best coconut ice cream anywhere, served in a coconut shell

Meanwhile, back on the street

Important setting from Harry Potter, or perhaps Lion, Witch, and
Wardrobe, or possibly Shadowlands; people were taking pix of it

Radcliffe Camera

Sunday afternoon, people getting out a bit, although still mostly
masked and distanced

T. E. Lawrence's actual garb, helping lead the Arab
uprising in 1916-1918; he was a student at Jesus
College, Oxford; we're in the Ashmolean Museum,
which is mostly about the exploits of Oxford
faculty and the wealth and acquisitiveness of its
alumni

Everyone masked here too

St. Nicholas strafing a mermaid, Bicci of Lorenzo, early 15th century

Still my Ashmolean favorite, Ucello's Hunt in the Forest

Typical Ashmolean scene

In the music room

Never miss a Ghilandaio, even a little one

Devil's Arrows

From Edinburgh we headed back south, into England, to visit some favorite sights of yore. Not averse to something new, however, we stopped to see the Devil's Arrows, a set of menhirs, possibly once an alinement, in Boroughbridge, York county, a few hundred meters off the A1. The site includes Britain's second tallest menhir. The tallest, of course, is the Rudston Monolith, which we visited in 2019.

Click to enlarge; this will be on the quiz

Two out in the cornfield, no footpath, forbiddingly fenced, plus
we didn't want to catch corn blight

From a safe distance

Ditto

We'd actually given up finding the third one and
were driving off when Vicki spotted this, in someone's
driveway ("Mind the Menhir" the sign said)

Me, for scale

The grooves are said to be from erosion over
the past 5,000-6,000 years

View back to the cornfield and the other two

In Edinburgh, 2021, Briefly

We had unfinished business in Edinburgh. We had stored our European camper there in August of 2019, then sold it in August of 2020, with our various personal possessions still in it. So part of the unfinished business was to retrieve those items and to make sure the camper was still ship shape and Bristol fashion for the new owners. This took the better part of two days, including traveling to and from our hotel in Newington, in Edinburgh. Only the third day did we get into old Edinburgh to attend to more unfinished business.

Going through things in the camper...you can't take everything with
you...there were several trips to the nearby charity shops...old clothes
mostly...but also a few painful partings...none more so than my
Eiger Pivetta heavy duty Italian mountaineering boots...as 
recommended in Colin Fletcher's The Complete Walker...one-piece
leather construction...heavy Vibram soles...purchased in 1972...
took me to the top of the Grand Teton and many other mountains...
re-soled at least twice, the new soles trimmed and affixed 
with proper brass screws...I took them to one of the nicer shops
and carefully explained all this to the manager in the hope they
would not simply be trashed...OK, I hadn't worn them since the
90s, and then only on heavy snow days in Montana...and, Vicki
points out, they weighed five pounds each...

More unfinished business was a visit to Cadenhead's for 
another few wee drams

Miscellaneous Royal Mile sights

Small business

Opportunities available across the UK

Father of economics

'Twas the Invisible Hand did this...

More unfinished business...replacing a lost
cashmere McKay scarf...alas! out of stock! but
we found another one upstairs (McCoy is a
derivative of McKay)

Edinburgh Castle sans Tattoo, something we don't usually see

Walking toward New Town

Amuse bouche at our favorite Edinburgh bistro, Chez Jules; hey,
if you're eating Thai in York, why not French in Edinburgh?

Her onion soup

My pate

Her steak frites

My mussels frites; oops, forgot to picture the panacotta desserts

Site of literary inspiration, for Harry Potter (now disputed, I
understand); walking back up and down the hills to Newington