Harry Potter - Oxford & Warner Bros Studio Tour

---

Geo: 51.7302, -0.45118

After a full English breakfast, we hit the road by 8.40am to maximize our time in Oxford. We wandered down past the remains of the Oxford Castle, learning that Oxford has been a university town since the 12th century, and past Carfax Tower, in through the covered markets which were built when Cpt Cook was still discovering Australia.

It is always lovely to come around the corner and see the Radcliffe Camera - one day, I want to be able to enter it! - Then we saw the Bridge of Sighs replica (or tribute!), the Sheldonian Theatre and a couple of peeks in the cloisters of colleges before we joined a tour of the Bodleian Library. Our guide was the cliche of an older English gentlemen, maybe military (there was some comment that he was Colonel! But he also told us he was a lawyer so maybe not). The school of divinity was just fantastic, as was the room where the English Parliament was held when avoiding plague-ridden London, and the Oxford Court where Oscar Wilde was tried for not paying his tailor. Then upstairs to the Bodlean Library - an amazing treasure house of priceless books and manuscripts. It's still a working library, so we had to be absolute silent and the librarian complains if you look at him...it was almost comical how quiet we had to be!!!

Then (after a bit of a false start re lunch) we raced back to the car, buying our third lunch of pasties in three days! Off to Warner Bros Studio Tour at the Leavensden which was where the films were actually made.

The tour was amazing! Long queues to get in, even with our timed tickets, but all that was forgotten the minute that door swung open and we found ourselves in the actual Great Hall of Hogwarts. Everything was decorated for Christmas, and we spent the happiest 4 hours, wandering through the sets of the 8 Harry Potter movies, seeing costumes, animatronics and special effects from the movies. We've never done a movie studio tour before, and it was just wonderful. Highlights were the white model of the castle of Hogwarts, the Knight bus (with fake movie snow!) and a green screen experience of flying a broomstick - wait till you see the videos! We really loved seeing how the animatronics were done to make all the wild and weird creatures in the series.

Afterwards, we headed just around the corner to Kings Langley - the 13th century Royal Palace is long destroyed and the dodgy 1980s motel we stayed at was no real replacement. However, the motel was clean (other than a stench of old cigarette smoke in the kids non-smoking room) and convenient (other than rooms at far ends of the corridors) and there was the English equivalent of a Sizzlers for roast meats as part of the complex. Kids discovered they like Yorkshire puddings!

---