Town and gown

Arminta Wallace visits Oxford, a city of winding lanes and ancient colleges.

Arminta Wallacevisits Oxford, a city of winding lanes and ancient colleges.

MORSE WOULD have loved it. A young and glamorous female student gives guided tours of Oxford that end not with a rabbit pulled from a hat but with a crocodile photographed on the banks of the Thames - a fiction for the benefit of the goggle-eyed tourists.

So began the first episode of Lewis, the Inspector Morse TV spin-off. In real life the tour guides in Oxford are truthful and conscientious. But then, in real-life Oxford, there's no need to make anything up, because the city contains more than enough to keep any discerning tourist in a state of goggledom for several days.

It is, as Matthew Arnold poetically put it, a city of dreaming spires. But it's also a city of winding lanes and crooked cobbles, of serene college quadrangles and crenellated skylines, of cafes and markets and big buttery-golden buildings.

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Its centre is satisfyingly small - everything worth seeing can easily be reached on foot - but its intellectual horizons are dizzyingly immense. As you wend your way along streets with enchanting names and architecture to match - Catte Street, Turl Street, Brasenose Lane - you're reminded at each step of the giants who've walked here in the past, from Walter Raleigh and TS Eliot to John Locke and Edmund Halley.

As for sights, turn one way and you're looking at a dead ringer for Venice's Bridge of Sighs - a copy, built in 1913 - turn the other and you're in front of the spectacular curves of England's largest circular reading room, the Radcliffe Camera.

Want to see the remains of a dodo? Stroll along Parks Road to Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Or how about the blackboard used by Einstein to teach the theory of relativity, at the Museum of the History of Science? Meanwhile, if Old Schools Quad at the Bodleian Library looks familiar, that's because it is. You'll have seen it in the Harry Potter movies.

But Harry Potter isn't even the half of it. Oxford's literary connections are a legend in themselves, from Brideshead Revisited through JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis to the best-known literary names of all, the late Inspector Morse and the long-suffering Lewis.

In this city of learning it seems a pity to wander around in a state of blissful ignorance, so get ahead of the pack by downloading walking tours on to your MP3 player from www.tourist-tracks.com. Three generous tours of the city are a snip at €6; they're hugely informative and, as long as you print out the accompanying maps - and remember to bring them with you - good fun. Alternatively, go to Oxford Tourist Information Centre, on Broad Street, and buy a modestly-priced map and visitor's guide that allows you to do your own thing.

And here's the thing: unless you're paying college fees, Oxford knowledge comes pretty much for free. Some of the museums have a small entrance charge, but, by and large, once you've got yourself on to the X70 bus from Heathrow's Central Bus Station, that's you sorted. The journey takes an hour and costs £19 (€24.20) single.

As you wander around the historic centre, you'll notice that each college puts a sign outside, detailing any events for the day that are open to the public; these are mostly free, and range from feminist debates through seminars on radical politics to evensong performances.

The colleges are the stars of the show. They are astonishingly old - Balliol and Merton date from the 13th century, while New College is a mere blow-in from 1379 - and architecturally jaw-dropping. (Stained-glass fans, take note: Oxford contains one of the finest collections anywhere in the UK, including 19th-century examples by William Morris.)

They're also full of life, in the shape of large numbers of energetic young men and women who provide the city with its vibrant heart. When you tire of that, head for Christ Church Meadow, a series of winding walks along the bank of the Thames, and chill out with ducks, geese and some extraordinarily tame swans.

After which bucolic interlude it will be time for a spot of retail therapy. Oxford shops sport everything from antique silver to astrolabes. Or how about a hand-painted chess set from Hoyles puzzle shop? And, oh, the bookshops: if you're talking paradise for book-lovers, 60 virgins in a Sufi garden would be nothing compared to the 950sq m Norrington Room, in the basement of Blackwell book shop, on Broad Street. I barely got out with my baggage allowance intact.

Who says a little learning isn't a dangerous thing?

Where to stay

The French-owned Oxford Malmaison (3 Oxford Castle, New Road, 00-44-1865- 268400, www.malmaison- oxford.com) must be one of the most atmospheric hotels anywhere. Cleverly adapted from the buildings that once housed the city's prison, and next door to the Oxford Castle heritage site and visitor centre, it's a glorious mixture of minimalist modern and over-the-top Gothic. My room looked out on to the 20m motte, or mound, that is all that remains of the original castle, built in 1071 on the orders of William the Conqueror. Despite a leaflet by my bedside that chronicled all the hangings, typhus epidemics, murder, mayhem and skulduggery that had taken place thereabouts over the past nine centuries or so, I slept like a baby. About €160 per night without breakfast.

Oxford is well supplied with top-notch accommodation - check out the five-star Randolph Hotel (Beaumont Street, 00-44-1506-815142, www.macdonaldhotels.co.uk/randolph), just across the road from the Ashmolean Museum; the Mercure Eastgate, on High Street; or the Old Parsonage, on leafy Banbury Road.

For something a little more modest, there are several immaculate-looking establishments 15 minutes out of the city centre. An en-suite double at Lakeside Guest House (118 Abingdon Road, 00-44-1865-244725, www.oxfordcity.co.uk/accom/ lakeside), costs just under €100 per night.

Where to eat

In a student city everyone eats on the hoof, which means that at all hours of the Oxford day and night you can grab anything from burritos to baked spuds through more varieties of cake than you can shake a stick at, all wrapped and ready to go.

You'll want to loiter in Queen's Lane Coffee House

(40 High Street, 00-44-1865- 240082), whose snug bow-fronted windows allow you to gaze out as you sip a coffee and read your book - or tuck into any one of a vast number of modestly-priced all-day breakfast combos.

On the opposite side of the road, All Bar One (124 High Street, 00-44-1865-258991) offers a perch for the terminally trendy. Don't forget your laptop, so you can put it on the table in full view of passers-by.

If spicy Armenian lamb served with tomato and spinach pilau sounds like your thing, head for the Nosebag

(6-9 St Michael's Street, 00-44-1865-721033).

Where to go

Whatever you do, don't miss the pubs. Oxford has a fistful of legendary watering holes, the oldest of which, the Bear, dates from 1242. The Turf Tavern, in tiny Bath Place, is where Bill Clinton allegedly smoked marijuana in the 1960s - he didn't inhale, so that's okay - and the Eagle and Child, known locally as the Bird and Baby, was once the haunt of JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. And at the Head of the River you can sit at a trestle table on the riverbank and enjoy a post-prandial pint within sneezing distance of Oxford Police Station, on St Aldates. Ah, Morse, where art thou?

Go there

Aer Lingus (www.aerlingus. com), Ryanair (www.ryan air.com), Aer Arann (www. aerarann.ie) BMI (www. flybmi.ie) and BMI Baby (www.bmibaby.com) variously fly from Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Knock, Waterford and Belfast to London Heathrow, London Gatwick and Birmingham. See www.oxfordbus.co.uk for coach connections from Heathrow and Gatwick and www.virgintrains.co.uk for rail connections from Birmingham.