Friday was a long day. We were scheduled to take the train from Paddington Station to Oxford to have a guided tour of the city and university. Nature was not amused. The wind and rain made the direct route impossible. So we took the train from Paddington to Reading and changed for Oxford.
We saw lots of flooded farm land and rivers, including the Thames, out of their banks alone the way. We arrived late, of course, and our tour was curtailed. Nevertheless, we were able to stand in the rain and hear a few interesting things about the city and the people how have made it famous.
We visited the church that was the first lecture hall in the 11th century.
I got to visit the science museum (of course!) and see the preserved blackboard from Einstein's lecture there in 1931.
The museum also housed some of the glassware used by Sir Humphrey Davy.
And this curious "medical electrical" device, no doubt for delivering shocks to people for some sort of therapeutic reason. It is an electrostatic generator that picks the charge from the rotating glass cylinder using the horn-shaped metal device with the teeth on the left. A precursor to the van de Graf machine I used in graduate school.
It was a cold and dreary day, filled with rain and wind that make seeing very much difficult and unpleasant. Our trip home was back through Reading with a new twist. By this time of day,the trains to Paddington were cancelled and we took there train to Waterloo. This simplified our tube ride once back in London, but it was local and took quite a long time to bring us back, stopping every few minutes.
In spite of the weather and the trains, we had a fun day and saw many wonderful things. Certainly, a place to visit in better weather on faster trains.
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