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The Nutcracker Christmas Shop (10-6)
High Street
Edinburgh, UK EH1 1TB

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9:00 a.m.

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9:20 a.m.

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9:50 a.m.

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1:30 p.m.

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1:35 p.m.

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Loch Ness Gifts (9:30-4:30)
Drum Farm Visitors Centre
Drumnadrochit, Inverness, IV63 6TX
Fine quality gifts from the shores of Loch Ness in The Highlands of Scotland. We have sourced only the best suppliers from all over Scotland to enable us to offer you traditional Scottish and Nessie themed gifts and keepsakes or that special gift for any occasion.

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2:35 p.m.

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3:10 p.m.

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7:15 p.m.

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8:30 a.m.

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11:30 a.m.

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12:15 p.m.

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2:00 p.m.

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9:00 a.m.

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11:30 a.m.

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Brook Lodge
192 Alcester Rd.
Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire CV37 9DR
tel/fax +44 (0)1789 295988
One double en suite at £ 70 and one triple en suite (for two persons only) at £ 78.  Rates are inclusive of full English breakfast.

Le Petit Croissant  
Lower High Street
Chipping Campden. Tel: 01386 841861.  
French Bakery, Delicatessen, Fine Wines & Champagne

(Next to the Court Barn, a scenic tree-lined lane leads to the front door of the church. On the way, notice the 12 lime trees. There is one for each of the apostles. They were planted in about 1760.)

Cotswold Garden Tearooms & Garden
Digbeth St.
Scones

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The Angel Hotel £231.40
Castle Stree
Cardiff, South Glamorgan CF10 1SZ
(£76.30 per room for a twin and 2 double rooms with breakfast, AC, free wifi in rooms, refreshment tray, breakfast included)

After being held by the de Clare and Despenser families for several centuries, Richard de Beauchamp acquired the castle in 1423. Richard conducted extensive work at the castle, founding the main range on the west side of the castle, dominated by a tall, octagonal tower. Following the Wars of the Roses, the status of the castle as a Marcher territory was revoked and its military significance began to decline. The Herbert family took over the property in 1550, remodelling parts of the main range and carrying out construction work in the outer bailey, then occupied by Cardiff's Shire Hall and other buildings. During the English Civil War, Cardiff Castle was initially taken by Parliamentary force, but was regained by Royalist supporters in 1645. When fighting broke out again in 1648, a Royalist army attacked Cardiff in a bid to regain the castle, leading to the battle of St. Fagans just outside the city. Cardiff Castle escaped potential destruction by Parliament after the war and was instead garrisoned to protect against a possible Scottish invasion.

In the mid-18th century, Cardiff Castle passed into the hands of the Marquesses of Bute. John Stuart, the first Marquess, employed Capability Brown and henry Holland to renovate the main range, turning it into a Georgian mansion, and to landscape the castle grounds, demolishing many of the older medieval buildings and walls. During the first half of the 19th century, the family became extremely wealthy as a result of the growth of the coal industry in Glamorgan. The third Marquess, John Crichton-Stuart, used this to back an extensive programme of renovations under William Burges. Burges remodelled the castle in a medieval Gothic revival style, lavishing money and attention on the main range. The resulting interior designs are considered by historian Megan Aldrich to be amongst "the most magnificent that the gothic revival ever achieved".The grounds were re-landscaped and, following the discovery of the old Roman remains, reconstructed walls and a gatehouse in a Roman style were incorporated into the castle design. Extensive landscaped parks were built around the outside of the castle.

In the early 20th century, the fourth Marquess, John, inherited the castle and construction work continued into the 1920s. The Bute lands and commercial interests around Cardiff were sold off or nationalised during the period until, by the time of the Second World War, almost only the castle remained. During the war, extensive air raid shelters were built in the castle walls, able to hold up to 1,800 people. When the Marquess died in 1947, the castle was given to the city of Cardiff. Today the castle is run as a tourist attraction, with the grounds housing the "Firing Line" regimental museum and interpretation centre. The castle has also served as a venue for events, including musical performances and festivals.

10:30 a.m.

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The Falcon B&B £130.00
88/90 Abingdon Road
Oxford OX1 4PX
T: 01865 511122
stay@falconoxford.co.uk
www.falconoxford.co.uk 
(Check-in 1-10 p.m., parking, ensuite, Full English or Vegetarian breakfast)

University College. It was here that the young C.S. Lewis arrived on April 26, 1917 to begin his academic studies as an undergraduate.

His rooms were on staircase XII, Room 5 of the Radcliffe Quad. When the young Lewis interrupted his studies to join the army, he had the good fortune to stay in Oxford and train at Keble College. He often would return to University College (known as “Univ.”) for weekends.
C.S. Lewis in a letter of July, 1917:

“You can’t imagine how I have come to love Univ., especially since I left. Last Saturday evening when I was sleeping alone, I spent a long time wandering over it, into all sorts of parts where I had never been before, where the mullioned windows are dark with ivy that no one has bothered to cut since the war emptied the rooms they belong to.”

Lewis was to take a double first in Literae Humaniores (more commonly known as “Classics”); he completed his studies with a first in English in 1923.

Continue down High St going east/left. You will immediately find the Examination Schools on your right. Here and in other venues, Lewis, Tolkien and Williams presented their lectures to Oxford students.

C.S. Lewis in a letter of February 1940:

“On Monday Charles Williams lectured, nominally on [Milton's] Comus but really on Chastity. Simply as criticism it was superb-because here was a man who really cared with every fibre of his being about “The sage and the serious doctrine of virginity” which it would never occur to the ordinary modern reader to take seriously.”

Continue east along the High until you reach the Eastgate Hotel, which is on the corner of Merton Street. Since Tolkien was a Fellow of Merton College and Lewis of Magdalen College, the Eastgate was a convenient place for them to meet.

C.S. Lewis in a letter to his brother, November 1939:

” On Thursday we had a meeting of the Inklings — you and Coghill both absent unfortunately. We dined at the Eastgate. I have never in my life seen Dyson so exuberant — “A roaring cataract of nonsense.”

Magdalen College

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England.”

 Addison’s Walk: Named after the great English man of letters and graduate of Magdalen, Joseph Addison, this was a favourite walking place for Lewis and his friends.From They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves:

” September 1931 He [Hugo Dyson] stayed the night with me in College… Tolkien came too, and did not leave till 3 in the morning… We began (in Addison’s Walk just after dinner) on metaphor and myth – interrupted by a rush of wind which came so suddenly on the still warm evening and sent so many leaves pattering down that we thought it was raining….

We continued on Christianity: a good long satisfying talk in which I learned a lot….

October 1931 Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: and again, that if I met the idea of god sacrificing himself to himself…. I liked it very much… provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels… Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with tremendous difference that it really happened…. Does this amount to a belief in Christianity? At any rate I am now certain (a) that this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approach the other myths; (b) that it is the most important and full of meaning. I am also nearly sure that it happened…. “

” My big sitting room looks north and from it I can see nothing, not even a gable or a spire, to remind me that I am in town. I look down on a stretch of ground which passes into a grove of immemorial forest trees, at present coloured autumn red. Over it stray deer. They are erratic in their habits. Some mornings when I look out there will be half a dozen chewing the cud just underneath me, and on others there will be none in sight — or a little stag (not much bigger than a calf and looking too slender for the weight of his antlers) standing and sending through the fog that queer little bark which is these beasts’ “moo.” It is a sound that will be as familiar to me as the cough of the cows in the field at home for I hear it day and night.”

“My first taste of Oxford was comical enough. I had made no arrangements about quarters and, having no more luggage than I could carry in my hand, I sallied out of the railway station on foot to find either a lodging-house or a cheap hotel; all agog for “dreaming spires” and “last enchantments.” My first disappointment at what I saw could be dealt with. Towns always show their worst face to the railway. But as I walked on and on I became more bewildered. Could this succession of mean shops really be Oxford? But I still went on, always expecting the next turn to reveal the beauties, and reflecting that it was a much larger town than I had been led to suppose.

Only when it became obvious that there was very little town left ahead of me, that I was in fact getting to open country, did I turn round and look. There behind me, far away, never more beautiful since, was the fabled cluster of spires and towers. I had come out of the station on the wrong side and been all this time walking into what was even then the mean and sprawling suburb of Botley. I did not see to what extent this little adventure was an allegory of my whole life. I merely walked back to the station, somewhat footsore, took a hansom, and asked to be driven to “some place where I can get rooms for a week, please.”

The method, which I should now think hazardous, was a complete success, and I was soon at tea in comfortable surroundings. The house is still there, the first on the right as you turn into Mansfield Road out of Holywell. I shared the sitting room with another candidate, a man from Cardiff College, which he pronounced to be architecturally superior to anything in Oxford. His learning terrified me, but he was an agreeable man. I have never seen him since.”

It is likely that the tower was built to contain bells from the beginning, but the earliest record of bells in the tower dates to the 13th century - by which time the bell of St Bene’t’s was used to summon students to special lectures and to examinations. The Rector, Alan, complained about this in 1273, but was persuaded by the Bishop of Ely to permit the bell to be used 'in a civil and honest way'. Thereafter the parish clerk was paid an annual fee of six shillings and eightpence for such ringing. It is likely that there was more than one bell in the tower so it may have possessed a peal of four bells; the tenor was the best bell in town. For many years after that, St Bene’t's bells were used for summoning to 'ye schooles ... acts, clearums, congregations, lecturs, disses, and such like' according to a receipt for the six shillings and eightpence dated 1624. In 1553 there were 'thre great Belles and one Sanctus Bell', but by 1650 they were 'much out of frame and almost become uselesse'. In 1655 the churchwardens appealed for money to repair the bells. The University gave thirty shillings, with the caveat that it was a free gift, not to be regarded as setting a precedent. Corpus Christi College also gave money. Circular holes in the bell tower were to allow owls to roost and keep the mouse population down.

(Go back to Kings Parade/Trinity St. and turn right.  Then turn left on Trinity Lane. Enter through Queen's Gate.)

Pembroke College (2-5)
The college is the third oldest college of the university and has over seven hundred students and fellows. On Christmas Eve 1347, Edward III granted Marie de St Pol, widow of the Earl of Pembroke, the licence for the foundation of a new educational establishment in the young university at Cambridge. The Hall of Valence Mary, as it was originally known, was thus founded to house a body of students and fellows. It’s home to the first chapel designed by Sir Christopher Wren.

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Trafalgar Square-is a square in central London that commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), a British naval victory of the Napoleonic Wars. The original name was to have been "King William the  Fourth's Square", but George Ledwell Taylor suggested the name "Trafalgar Square.  Completed in 1845.

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(At Victoria Station take the Victoria/Walthamstow Central line 5 stops to King's Cross/St Pancras. Look for signs to St. Pancras Station.)

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