Invasion of the dreaming spires

The view from the top of the tower of St Mary's Church, Oxford, stretches out across the green countryside, the distant fields and hills shimmering in the afternoon heat. Close by, the Radcliffe Camera - part of the Bodleian Library complex - sits in its own space, circular and splendid, flanked by the equally elegant colleges of Brasenose and All Souls. A cooling breeze eddies around the stone gargoyles and castellated parapet of the tower whose narrow spiralling staircase is an escape route to solitude for, in the world below, the streets teem with some of the seven million plus visitors who come to Oxford each year.

To the many residents, the throng of coaches, the hordes of language students, the sheer presence of so many people in a small city with a permanent population of 140,000 (add on another 17,000 for the two universities and other higher educational establishments) may seem nothing short of a recurring irritant. But to the shopkeepers, the guest-house landladies, the ice-cream sellers and those colleges open to the public, the sound of money changing hands is more than welcome. For the tourist industry in Oxford generates £187 million per year.

The visitors come in all shapes and sizes - as do their purses. The Japanese are regarded as high-spenders and are known to be the most diligent of tourists, looking, recording - and buying. Both the Crown Prince and his wife are Oxford graduates, he of Merton, she of Balliol, and the city is not shy about promoting this in its Japanese-language promotional material.

Day trippers, often language students visiting from their summer schools elsewhere, are the smallest spenders, outlaying perhaps £2 on a guide book and a further £1.50 on an ice cream. Those who come to take courses in Oxford and who seem to spend a lot of their leisure time standing, in groups, on the same spot, are offered a code of behaviour by the city: think of other people, keep your voice down and try not to meet your friends at the same meeting point as everyone else.

Noise is an irritant that particularly afflicts people working in the Bodleian Library where the reading-room windows are level with the top deck of the talking, open-top, guide buses. But, despite the queuing, the unreliable weather and the crush of bodies, Oxford remains a favourite tourist destination.

"It's a magnet," says Jean Ashton, the city's tourism manager. "People come mainly for cultural reasons, to see the architecture and to visit the museums. The collections in the museums are teaching collections and therefore of great international significance."

There is Wren's Sheldonian Theatre, the swans at St John's, the smallest cathedral in Britain - and the shrunken heads in the Pitt Rivers Museum. Take your pick.

Inevitably, traffic is a problem and to ease it - both for its citizens and its visitors - Oxford has four park-and-ride stops on the edge of the city: leave your car at one of the parks and get a bus in and out of town, all for £1.10 a day. You can then take a walking tour (ghost, Morse or colleges), hop on an open-top bus - or take a rickshaw ride for a fiver. Carol N. Darcy, a visitor from Boston, had just done a walking tour: "It gives you a taste of the city and makes you want to do something longer. And Oxford is very clean."

A couple of hours' drive away, Cambridge too enjoys - or suffers, depending on your view - a similar in-pouring of visitors. With its population of 111,000 augmented by an annual visitation of three-and-a-half million tourists, the city benefits to the tune of £195 million. Some of this money is used to employ six courtesy couriers whose job it is to stand on the streets and answer people's questions.

Brian Human, of Cambridge City Planning Department explains: "Some are positioned at the coach drop-off points with maps and advice at the ready. They must be able to speak a range of languages. Last year, we were able to offer Swedish and Japanese. Of course, everyone who comes to Cambridge wants to go punting and visit King's College Chapel. It's the equivalent of Dublin's Book Of Kells," he says.

Like Oxford, Cambridge has an accommodation problem. "We have the Holiday Inn and at the top of the range the Garden House," says Brian Human, "but we're short of beds in the middle price range, which means people often have to stay in places up to 15 miles away." The city's way of dealing with this is to promote weekend breaks - when there are no business people in town.

Finding accommodation in holiday time in colleges is not as easy as it used to be, largely because the colleges lease out their facilities for conferences. One college which is fully exploiting its tourist potential in Oxford is Christ Church: "They even have their own member of staff responsible for tourism," says Jean Ashton.

Climbing up the tower of St Mary's Church in Oxford is a regulated business. The guardian of the tower has two saucers and 25 yellow beads. Every time someone goes up, she transfers a bead to the up saucer and when someone comes down, the transferred a bead is moved to the down saucer.

Oxford may be a centre of higher learning, but oriental visitors will be pleased to note that a simple abacus is still your only man.