Tuesday, April 24. Got ourselves to Victoria and then thrashed about a bit looking for the Oxford Tube - though we'd travelled on it a few times the precise details of where it left from seemed to have escaped us, and it's not clearly signposted (Buckingham Palace Road, Stand 10, for future reference). Then to Oxford. The road the bus takes runs almost straight, which means it passes over the Chilterns at their SW end, and then in a deep chalk cutting down into the plain of Oxford. Clouds of kestrels over the motorway. Sheep and cattle here for the first time, whereas on the London side the only livestock were horses, which seems a wasteful use of land. Fields of rape, in yellow flower. On first sight of these gentle hills you wonder how it was they held back the first wave of A-S settlement, until you think about what it would mean to fight uphill. Bus driver's vowels noticeably shifted anti-clockwise to Australian. St Hugh's, where we were booked, a long haul for suitcases, up the Banbury Road in light rain. Originally a women's college, now coed as are all except one, I think. Long corridors, lots of fire doors, and a room not a lot bigger than the friars' cells we saw in San Marco, though sans frescos by Fra Angelico. Not sure I've ever been in a student's college room before, but for £55 for the two of us, what can you expect? And how is it they have vacant rooms in term time? Could be a glum sort of life if you were a student, I rather feel, and calculated to promote precocious sexual activity - not necessarily a good thing. Back to town, and coffee in a new place A1 recommended while L revealed her plans for the rest of the week, which she claimed to have been too frightened to tell me before. Then wandered round while she did tasks of various kinds. Dinner in a pub.