Last week at Oxford! [2026 summer travels, update 3]

Hi all! 

Greetings from Birmingham! I am traveling on my own now — this morning I packed my bags, turned in my keys, and caught a train out of town. 

But before all of that, however, I had one last magical week at Lady Margaret Hall! And this was the week I was most looking forward to — lecture topics included C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, adaptations of fantasy (think film!), and practical writing advice. It was incredibly inspiring. And it made leaving very challenging. I made good friends while here; it is hard to stomach not seeing them everyday. 

On Saturday, two of these friends and I went into town for an afternoon at a museum. Of all the captivating choices around Oxford, we chose the ‘Story Museum.’ I was a big fan. The first room placed you into forest full of trees. There were live story tellers, who were more than pleased to have a audience sit for story time — even if we were three full-grown adults. Moving further into the space and each of the trees in the forest played a engaging tale of its own. We spent nearly an hour in this room flying on backs of dragons, fighting thieves, and fleeing from witches. 

And when we finally did manage to part from the forest, we stumbled into a library full of rooms themed to fantasy novels (Alice in Wonderland, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, His Dark Materials ex…) We did eventually come across C.S. Lewis’s writing desk, which is what we had gone searching for in the first place. 

If you are in Oxford and enjoy fantasy, I highly recommend this museum! 

Following this I was quite busy with schoolwork and writing. I spent many hours at my desk or in the gardens with my computer or a book over the next few days. It felt nice to be still and productive, however. There is something about the flowers and the fresh air in Oxford that allowed for a hyper constructive imagination! 

Then it was Thursday evening already, and we were presented with our ‘graduation’ certificates. They were given a day early; I still had several classes the following day. A writers workshop, the history of chapbooks, and a introduction to letterlocking! 

Friday brought the final dinner. This was a formal, three course meal of fantastic quality. And afterwards, two of us book nerds snuck off campus for one last arcane walk down to the train tracks. Ok, so I admit that I am running out of creative descriptors and had to google search for ‘arcane’ — but it really was a magical sunset and a beautiful way to end this portion of my trip! 

After check-out this morning several trains (mine included) did not leave until the afternoon. So one last trip into town for the Ashmolean museum it was. The museum was cool, but not magical (I was tired and stressed about traveling. Also, I wonder if any museum could ever feel magical again without interpretive fairytales?!). After the museum and some snack shopping, I boarded the train out of Oxford.

And so we’ve circled back to Birmingham; I will post more of my adventures from this evening here or to Substack soon! On that note, some housekeeping… Updates will now be available from several social media platforms. I will keep posting to Facebook, Instagram, and the blog, but there is now also the option for Substack. 

Substack is useful in that you can ‘subscribe’ to receive updates directly to your inbox. It is also very useful for aspiring writers…

With gratitude, 

HK

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