Alice in Wonderland & Rivers and Canals in Oxford

“It doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat. " – so long as I get somewhere," Alice added ... "Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Discover Alice's Oxford in the footsteps of author and professor Lewis Carroll.

The route passes Christ Church, where Carroll taught and lived all his adult life and where the inspiration for his story, Alice Liddell, was the daughter of the Dean.

After passing some of the city’s finest collegiate architecture, the walk will then explore some less visited, quieter parts of the city, via the resting place of two Hatters, through University Parks (Pleasure and Delight guaranteed! And a minute of cricket) – and the ‘loveliest building of the plain’

With reference to some of Oxford’s other renowned writers of fantasy fiction, the walk continues to the Oxford University Press building in Jericho, where the first edition of Alice’s Adventures was printed in June 1865, and finished at the remarkable and relevant St Barnabas Church in Jericho.

A circuit through some of the oldest and most interesting parts of Oxford and its waterways including: the River Thames (including a lock of particular literary and strategic importance) and its sidestreams; the Oxford Canal (and another significant lock); St Thomas’ parish, the home of the city's brewing industry, from where most of Oxford's boating families derived; and a peep at the Victorian suburb of Jericho – rich in both literary, artistic and religious associations;the scene of past and current controversies.

We visit Oxford Castle, whose past is inseparable from Oxford’s waterways: through its situation, through the use of convict labour, and through its especially dynamic late-18th century prison governor-cum-engineer, architect, artist and builder, Daniel Harris.