I had to do some testing, of the kind that requires you to drive around in a car for two days (and no, I wasn’t buying a new car). So, yesterday afternoon I zizzed up to Cockfosters and picked up Ted and we motored over to Oxford.

It was a fantastic afternoon. The sun was burning up the sky and the road, there wasn’t a cloud to be seen, and the roads were generally clean and well-behaved. We made it there in what was probably record time, and were checked into our hotel and back out in the countryside in no time at all.

Last time I went to Oxford it wasn’t nearly so nice. The sky was grey, I think it rained, and we were stuck at the back of a retail park, with only a Little Chef to look at through the window. This time around, it was warm enough (hot enough, in fact) to walk into the city centre along the canal, which was thick with floating blossom, showering down on us like dry spring snow on the gently breeze.

It’s a lovely walk. The canal is lined on one side by quaint little house boats, and on the other - in a massive contrast - by the most extraordinarily expensive-looking houses with gardens that stretch right down to the water’s edge, where they are neatly squared off by little patios that let the residents sit out in their white garden chairs, watching the world drift by on a warm summer evening.

We dawdled most of the way, and it took us a good hour to get into the centre, where we bypassed the shops to look at some of the college backs, and then climb up the castle mount, where we sat and watched the world passing by.

Sunday, we turned south as part of a long slow sweep towards home, and went to Uffingham to see the 3000 year old horse carved into the hillside. It’s… well, a bit stark. It’s more like a few swishy lines, and while they do kind of look like a horse they’re more like the corporate logo for some swish modern meat-packing factory than something carved into the hillside 100 generations ago.

It’s not easy to spot it from any angle, unless the angle you are at happens to be 90 degrees upwards and you’re hovering in a helicopter, but it was very pleasant wandering around in the scorching sun among the crazed sheep, which ran in packs around the fields, clearly believing that would keep them safe from the tourists.

There is a strange hill, apparently human-made, just below the horse, which looks like either somewhere from which you should be able to see it (you can’t) or somewhere they might once have slaughtered virgins (apparently they didn’t). Legend has it that that’s where St George killed the dragon, and the bald patch where the grass won’t grow marks the spot where the dragon’s blood was spilt, and poisoned the ground.

Not wanting to spoil anyone’s fun, I didn’t like to say I suspected that it was probably actually more to do with too many people standing there.

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