A Day Trip to Oxford: Colleges, Cobbles and a City That Doesn't Need Two Days
Christ Church Cathedral spires rising above the Memorial Garden in Oxford
One day in Oxford during a heatwave, shaped by honey-coloured stone, a very good lunch, and a final frame I nearly missed.
Because Oxford isn't only colleges. In one day, on foot, I stood in one of the most photographed squares in Europe, found a hidden Antony Gormley artwork that almost nobody stops for, wandered wildflower gardens and Britain's oldest botanic garden, walked a riverside path past punts and rowing boats, ate excellent Lebanese food and fished with a proper pint in hand at a pub that's been pouring since 1607.
That's one city, one day, no car.
And something I really love about Oxford is that not too much has changed since the 1800s when you look closely, compared to some English cities. Strip out the e-scooters and the bus stops and whole streets, Turl Street especially, could sit in a Victorian photograph without much argument
A quick note on the photography before we start I shot 95% of the images on my Leica M11 35mm Summicron with the food images and the Botanic Garden and the Walk Along the Cherwell on my iPhone, but don’t worry if you're not a camera person, everything in this guide works just as well with a phone in your pocket and this is something I’m going to be doing more of once I get the iPhone 18 pro when it’s released.
The Short Read
GETTING THERE: Direct train, around an hour from London Paddington or from Coventry/Birmingham about the same. The city centre is a 15–20 minute walk from the station, all flat walking.
THE DAY: Radcliffe Square & All Souls → Bodleian & Divinity School quad → Trinity College gardens & the Gormley door → Turl Street → Lunch at Comptoir Libanais → London Camera Exchange → Christ Church Memorial Garden → High Street & St Mary's → Botanic Garden & the Cherwell riverside walk → The Grand Café → Bridge of Sighs → a pint at the Kings Arms.
BEST TIP: Get to Radcliffe Square before 9am. By 10 it belongs to the tour groups.
BEST MEAL: Comptoir Libanais was exactly what I needed in a heatwave, fresh, sharp and fast.
CAMERA KIT: Leica M11 + Summicron 35mm f/2 so effectively a one-lens day.
Final Thoughts: Oxford is one of the most complete day trips in England for me. Everything is walkable, every corner could be a picture, and even when you think the day is done, the city can still give you a surprise.
Keep Scrolling for the Long Read and Pictures
Radcliffe Square
Radcliffe Square and All Souls College
I started where everyone should start.
Radcliffe Square is the postcard image most people think of when they think of Oxford, with Radcliffe Camera sitting in the middle of it like a full stop at the end of a very long architectural sentence. Built in the 1740s to house a science library, it's now a reading room for the Bodleian, and it is genuinely difficult to take a bad photograph of it. If you want a full image go very wide on your phone camera.
Early morning is definitely the time to go. The cobbles were still mostly empty, a few students sitting with coffee, bikes leaning where bikes have presumably leaned for a hundred years.
The 35mm was perfect here, wide enough to get the some of the Camera and the spire of St Mary's in one frame, tight enough that the shot still feels composed rather than sprawling. I would have needed my 28mm without a doubt had I wanted an image on my camera of the full centre piece.
Radcliffe Square is a spot I always try to visit first when I am in Oxford as I love the architecture and can sit and stare at it getting lost in my own thoughts for a long time. A bit like the students in the images sat in the coves of the camera building.
By the time I left the square the first walking tours were arriving, so my before-9am advice stands, a cheeky bonus is that there is an ice cream stall at the side of All Souls to the left of the camera, so when it’s hot this is a great treat.
Radcliffe Camera with St Mary's spire and cobbles
Radcliffe Camera
The Bodleian and the Old Schools Quadrangle
A minute's walk from the square and you're in the Old Schools Quadrangle of the Bodleian Library, one of the oldest libraries in Europe and still a working library today!
The bronze statue of the Earl of Pembroke stands guard outside the entrance to the Divinity School that was built in 1488 and the honey-coloured Gothic stonework around the quad is ridiculous in the best way.
The Divinity School itself is ticket entry (you can grab tickets at the Weston Library on Broad Street), and if the ceiling in there is on your list, it's worth it. Interestingly a number of Harry Potter scenes were recorded here, being used for Hogwarts Infirmary.
I kept to the quad on this visit as by mid-morning the sun was cutting hard shadows across the stone and it felt more like shooting in southern Spain than Oxfordshire.
I also spent some time at the Clarendon Building archway nearby, where the frame through the arch stacks gate after gate into the distance.
The Old Schools Quadrangle, Bodleian Library
Earl of Pembroke statue outside Divinity School
The ceiling in Divinity School where Harry Potter was filmed
Trinity College and the Wildflowers
Trinity College from the wildflower borders
If you only pay to go inside one college, my honest suggestion is Trinity.
It's a few pounds to enter, it's noticeably quieter than Christ Church, and in summer the borders in front of the old buildings are left to run wild with poppies and lavender which I love seeing the colours of.
During the heatwave the whole garden was humming with bees, and the wildflowers in front of that Jacobean stone facade gave me one of my favourite images of the day.
It's also simply a good place to stand still for ten minutes in the shade of a tree, which by midday I badly needed. There was also chance to fill up my water bottle again here.
The Gormley Door
I am a huge Antony Gormley fan and have images of his work from around the country. So this was the find of the day for me and I bet most people walk straight past it.
On Parks Road, tucked beside Trinity's grand Stuart Gates, is a rusted steel door by the sculptor Antony Gormley, made in collaboration with the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage. Armitage's poem "Hinge" is etched across the surface, radiating out in raised concentric rings from the centre, and cut into the middle of it all is the keyhole: a small human silhouette, Gormley's trademark figure, placed at child height.
It's a working door, people pass through it every day, and the idea is that the steel keeps rusting and evolving with the seasons while the touch of hands slowly polishes it. Sculpture, poetry and a functioning college entrance in one object.
Get close for the detail shot, the little figure with daylight coming through it is one of the most quietly brilliant things in the city, and there wasn't a single other person stopping to look at it.
This is exactly why I try walking slowly with a camera and really look at the detail around me. The famous stuff in Oxford is fine, but the best finds are the ones you almost walked past.
Turl Street and a City That Runs on Bicycles
Turl Street essentials: a postbox and somebody's bike
Turl Street colourful building and shops
If Radcliffe Square is Oxford's postcard, Turl Street is its quieter, better-dressed cousin, a narrow lane linking Broad Street to the High Street, lined with college walls, a tailor, a chapel spire at the end, and almost none of the crowds. The frame that sums it up for me was simple: a Victorian red postbox set into the sandstone, and a bike chained to the street sign beside it.
And the bikes deserve their own paragraph, because Oxford genuinely runs on them. They're chained to every railing, leaned against every wall, stacked five deep outside every college gate, students and delivery riders all weaving through the same medieval streets.
As a photographer they can be a gift, an instant foreground for any frame, and after a day here a bike against honey-coloured stone starts to feel as much a part of the architecture as the spires. If you're driving to Oxford, make sure you do the park and ride (you will save on the city centre Zero Emission Zone too).
This is a city built for two wheels and two feet.
Lunch at Comptoir Libanais
By lunchtime it was properly hot, and heavy pub food was not happening.
Comptoir Libanais which serves Lebanese food was colourful, quick, and full of exactly the kind of fresh, sharp flavours you want when it's thirty degrees outside. Cold drinks, mezze, and air conditioning. I sat there longer than I needed to and I regret nothing. If you're doing Oxford in summer, put it on the list as it won’t break the bank either.
As a special treat: I did the thing I always do in any city that has one, and went for a good look around London Camera Exchange.
As always I "just go to browse," which any camera person reading this will recognise as a lie we tell ourselves. The used cabinet got a very thorough inspection, there was a Rollieflex 3.5F that caught my eye and I’m in two minds to sell my Hasselblad 500c and get one.
I did however, escape without buying a body, which counts as a win, but if you're into cameras it's a dangerous and brilliant little detour, and if you're travelling and need a battery, a filter or a roll of film, it's the place to go.
Christ Church Memorial Garden
Christ Church from the Memorial Garden
A short walk from lunch down St Aldates is a stop that costs nothing and delivers one of the best views in Oxford: the Christ Church Memorial Garden. You don't need a ticket, you just wander in off the street, and the view up over the stone walls and cottage borders to the cathedral spires is the kind of thing other cities would charge entry for.
If the Christ Church queue puts you off, and in summer it will, this garden gives you the postcard for free. Roses, foxgloves, old stone, big sky.
Two minutes or twenty, your choice.
If you continue up the path from this spot you will come to a pond in a garden that often has ducks, this is just over a small bridge with a stream running over it. If you go a little further again then you get to the Christ Church Vistors centre. You can drop your bags here if your going inside, there are toilets and a gift shop to browse in.
If you keep going past the vistors centre on Broad Walk you can turn right on Christ Church Meadow Walk and walk along the River Cherwell all the way to the River Thames, which is a nice walk or great little spot for a picnic too in the summer.
The High Street and St Mary's
The High Street is the artery of the city, colleges stacked shoulder to shoulder down one side, spires appearing and disappearing as the road curves. It's one of those streets where you can stand in roughly the same spot for twenty minutes and keep finding new frames as buses, bikes and people move through.
I love sitting in Black Sheep Coffee looking out the window people watching at the top of High Street, it lets me get a feel for what is happening if I am after any street photography, plus the coffee is good. Further down High Street is the famous covered market (perfect to get out of the sun) that has over 50 independent shops, cafes, and bars, if you are after a quick bite to eat, I’d recommend Oxford Dogs for some hot dogs.
The University Church of St Mary the Virgin sits right on High Street and Radcliffe Square, its spire is the one you'll have already seen photographed from Radcliffe Square without necessarily realising what it was.
If you've got the legs for it, you can climb the tower for what's regarded as the best view over the Radcliffe Camera and the city, I gave it a miss in the heat, but it is a view that is high on my list for the return trip in cooler weather.
The Botanic Garden and the Walk Along the Cherwell
The path along the Cherwell
At the far end of the High Street, just before Magdalen Bridge, is the stop I'd argue is maybe my favourite in the whole city: the Oxford Botanic Garden, you have to pay £10 for entry.
Founded in 1621, it's the oldest botanic garden in Britain, and on a heatwave afternoon it was just what I needed, water, shade, and somewhere green to slow the day right down. I should have got an ice cream and sat under a tree in the shade to relax.
Punts are moored up in rows on the Cherwell right below Magdalen Tower, red cushions against dark wood against green water, and with the old stone bridge behind them it's about as Oxford as a single frame gets. If you've ever wanted to try punting, this is where you'd hire one, I stayed on dry land with the camera, which given my coordination in thirty-degree heat was probably the right decision for everyone on that river.
Inside, the walled garden is laid out around a small fountain with benches under the trees, and the whole place moves at half the speed of the streets outside. People reading, couples doing nothing in particular, the kind of scene that hasn't changed much in four hundred years.
Further in, the rock garden's lily pond stopped me for a good while, water lilies in flower, goldfish drifting underneath, and the sky reflecting off the black water. Very Monet, if Monet had been dodging sunburn.
From the garden, the riverside path along the Cherwell is the gentlest walk of the day, flat gravel, willows leaning over the water, rowing boats and punts sliding past at walking pace. After a morning of towers, quads and hard vertical stone, half an hour of green and water resets you completely. If your feet are complaining by mid-afternoon, this stretch is the cure.
I took all of these four images on my iPhone, as I am keen to integrate more phone images into my blogs as I know not everyone has a camera but they will likely have a phone. I am hoping to get an iPhone 18 pro on an upgrade if the price is right otherwise I’ll get a 17 Pro as I’m sure there is not going to be much difference.
The Grand Café
The Grand Café on the High Street
A quick but necessary stop for another top up due to the heat.
The Grand Café on the High Street is a grade II building that stands on the site of the first coffee house in England, dating back to the 1650s, and the powder-blue and gold frontage is one of the prettiest shopfronts in the city.
High tea served all day, if that's your thing but I enjoyed the herbal teas they do, Cotswold Lavender is my favourite £6.95 with locally sourced Lavender too.
Even if you don't go in, the facade alone is worth a taking a picture of.
The Frame I Nearly Missed
Protest: The last frame of the day
As I walked up High Street to make my way to the famous Bridge of Sighs, I could hear chanting coming up the street from the Museum of Oxford.
A protest march, banners up, flags out, moving straight down the middle of the road in the late afternoon sun.
This is the thing about carrying a camera all day, you never know what will happen and what images you will get, although I always seem to wander into a march or protest, which I do love taking photos of as I love the placards and signs protesters have.
I had a few seconds to work with, so I stepped quickly into the road, lined the banner up square-on, took the frame, and stepped back out before the march reached me.
It's a good reminder that travel photography isn't only spires and stonework. Cities are living places, and sometimes the most honest picture of a place is what's happening on its streets that day.
One Frame of Film: The Bridge of Sighs
The Bridge of Sighs, one frame of HP5, crowds and all
I finished the day at the Bridge of Sighs, one of the most photographed corners in Oxford.
All the photos I took that day I didn’t love as it was so busy and the light from the sun was very bright, blowing the sky out quite a bit.
So I’d thought I’d share this picture I took on my Leica M6 on ilford HP5, black and white film. I like this image as its feels a little more balanced with the crowds and the bridge above, the tourists, the bikes, the whole scene as it actually was.
I guess the empty version already exists on a thousand postcards, but this one is what it actually looks like under that bridge most of the time.
The fact is every tourist that comes to Oxford goes to New College Lane to get this shot. Every time I have been there it’s always busy so I may have to do an 6am summer early morning trip.
Last Orders: A Pint at the Kings Arms
The Kings Arms, the correct way to end a day in Oxford
Every good day of walking should end at a pub, and in Oxford the choice made itself.
The Kings Arms sits on the corner of Holywell Street and Parks Road, a minute from the Bridge of Sighs, a pale pink Young's pub that's been serving since 1607 and claims a fair share of Oxford's academic gossip has passed across its tables.
The benches out at the front were full, the bike racks were somehow fuller, and a chalkboard was announcing it was "Spritz O'Clock," which after eight hours in that heat was not a hard sell.
I found a spot inside away from sun, and did the best thing you can do at the end of a photography day, which is absolutely nothing with a cold pint!
Camera on the table, cold glass in my hand it’s hard not to admire The Kings Arms classic, character-filled interior with dark wood and the faded antique photos hanging around the rooms. It definitely has that academic vibe that captures the quintessential Oxford student experience.
If you only have one pint in Oxford, have it here, unless you go to Oxford’s smallest pub The White Horse which is a 500 yards up the road. Both of which were two favourites of Inspector Morse.
Final Thoughts
If you're planning a similar day, here's the version I'd hand someone:
Morning: Train in early or drive and use the park and ride. Radcliffe Square before 9am, then the Bodleian quad and the Divinity School while the light is still kind. Trinity College when it opens for the gardens.
Midday: Broad Street and Turl Street for the quieter frames, lunch at Comptoir Libanais out of the heat, a browse in London Camera Exchange if you're a camera person and you're feeling strong.
Afternoon: The High Street end to end, St Mary's (climb the tower if it's not thirty degrees), then down to the Botanic Garden and the riverside walk along the Cherwell to give your feet and eyes a break, The Grand Café for the frontage and a herbal tea on the way back, then keep the camera out and up until you're actually on the train, because Oxford clearly hasn't finished with you until then.
One day genuinely is enough to see the heart of this city, but like London, it left me a list for next time, the tower climb at St Mary's, the Bridge of Sighs first thing in the morning, Christ Church Meadow. And after a full day out in that heat, I can confirm the two most important pieces of kit I carried weren't made by Leica: it was infact a water bottle and a tube of sun cream.
Follow along on Instagram @deanomooreo — and if you know a food or coffee spot in Oxford I missed, drop it in the comments for the return trip.