Addison's Walk

This time they will not lead you round and back
To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

That's from a poem by C.S. Lewis, a Fellow of Magdalen College, referencing this footpath in the college, where he often walked. (There is a plaque with the poem on one of the gates.) Unlike the walk around Christ Church Meadow, it's not open to everyone; it's inside the college and you have to buy a ticket to visit.

I went there early on a Saturday morning, and while the other tourists clustered in the quads, I mostly had this walk to myself, through these long tunnels of trees around the water meadow where the college's herd of deer live in the summer.

Because of course they have a herd of deer in the middle of the college in the 21st century. Christ Church College has cows, doesn't it?