Things to do in Oxford

Nature · North-west, along the Thames

Ancient common land that has never been ploughed, grazed by horses and cattle, flooding in winter and running down to the Thames and two riverside pubs.

Local tip: Walk out from Walton Well Road to the Perch at Binsey or on to the Trout at Wolvercote. In a hard winter the meadow floods and then freezes, and the whole city comes out to skate on it — an event nobody schedules and everybody hears about within an hour.

Food · Between High Street and Market Street

A permanent indoor market trading since the eighteenth century — butchers, a pie shop, a cobbler, cafés and the famous cake maker, in a warren of narrow aisles.

Local tip: It is genuinely a working market rather than a food hall, and the butchers and greengrocers are cheaper than the supermarkets. Go on a weekday morning; on a Saturday it is impassable.

Neighborhood · East Oxford, over Magdalen Bridge

A mile of independent restaurants, music venues, pound shops and grocers from every continent — the part of Oxford that is a city rather than a university.

Local tip: The best value eating in Oxford is on this road and nowhere near it. Start at the Plain end and work east; the further from Magdalen Bridge you get, the cheaper and better it becomes.

Landmark · City centre

One of the oldest libraries in Europe and its circular eighteenth-century reading room, at the centre of a square of medieval and Baroque university buildings.

Local tip: You cannot get into the Camera without a reader's card, but the Divinity School and the Duke Humfrey's Library are open on paid tours and are the better rooms anyway. The Weston Library next door is free and its exhibition gallery is consistently good.

Culture · East, up the hill

The hospital district, with the best view back over the whole city from South Park and a fibreglass shark embedded head-first in the roof of a terraced house.

Local tip: The Headington Shark has been there since 1986 after a long planning fight the owner eventually won. It is on New High Street, it is free, and it is a better story than most of what the tour buses stop at.

Nature · North, from Jericho

A narrow towpath running from Jericho out past moored narrowboats, allotments and Port Meadow to the edge of the city — flat, traffic-free and almost entirely used by locals.

Local tip: Start behind Jericho and walk or cycle north. Within fifteen minutes you are out of the city with the meadow on one side and the boats on the other, and you can carry on to Kidlington if you want to. Almost no visitor ever finds it.