Through an Arch

On a sunny Sunday, I thought I should add another college photograph to the collection. This is my own college, Christ Church, where I taught for 41 years from 1965.

This arch looks through to the expanse of Tom Quad, the first building on the left being the Deanery, famous amongst other things for being the childhood home of Alice, (she of Wonderland and the Looking Glass).

The further arch that the two young women in today's photograph are approaching is the entrance to the Great Hall. Recently, the Hall, and the staircase leading to it have become known worldwide as Hogwart's Hall in the Harry Potter films.

In fact, the arch in the foreground of my photograph has figured in numerous episodes of Inspector Morse. But there's a twist, because when Morse and Lewis pass through this arch, they never seem to come out into Tom Quad, but appear somewhere quite different, usually in a different college. Come to think of it, that sounds like Harry Potter all over again!

We were not really intending to visit film sets today, but rather had come for a walk in Christ Church Meadow, a wonderful place to stroll around in the sun in all seasons.

There are splendid trees all around, and we were clearly not the only ones intent on photographing them.

One particularly fine specimen is this tree with a fascinatingly complex trunk.

The river you see is the Cherwell, which we last showed on Blipfoto two weeks ago , when we were lunching with our children at the Cherwell Boathouse, a little way upstream. Just behind where I stood to photograph this tree today is where the Cherwell joins the Thames (here, to confuse matters, called the Isis).