A brief post for Queen’s Lane, my favorite stroll in Oxford.
The gardens are nice. University Park is a wonderful treat. But walking along the curving way of Queen’s Lane in the evening on a cool night is the best. The BEST walk, in my opinion, in all of Oxford.
No cars. One or perhaps two rare bicycles. Three or perhaps four people…no more.
High walls, ancient rock, carved gargoyles and mountings. Long shadows, leaded glass, and cobblestones beneath your feet.
The Lane is fairly long for a street in the city, and walking around each corner reminds me of the feeling I first got when walking through a labyrinth made of turf and small shrubs.
Socrates described a labyrinth in this way:
“Then it seemed like falling into a labyrinth: we thought we were at the finish, but our way bent round and we found ourselves as it were back at the beginning, and just as far from that which we were seeking at first.”
However, at the end of my Queen’s Lane labyrinth, I usually find that which I was seeking…a quiet stroll in a foreign land, before I head back to my books then my bed.