It was a blustery day in Oxford, the sort of day that rather playfully upends one’s trilby hat and deposits it in a puddle with unseemly delight. A new student at Balliol College, I found myself confronted by the daunting yet fascinating labyrinth of cobblestone paths and archaic stone stairways. Yet, my predicament promised to add an extra layer of challenge to my sojourn.
People say that Oxford is a place of immense charm and tradition, steeped in a history that can often prove as befuddling as a Greek philosopher on a particularly cryptic day. For a wheelchair user like me, it also presented its fair share of physical challenges, replete with obstacles that might have been specifically designed by a mischievous medieval architect to confound anyone reliant on wheels.