Tucked halfway down Cowley Road, the Ultimate Picture Palace is Oxford's oldest independent cinema and one of its most treasured. One screen, proper character, and a programme that runs from sharp new releases to Sunday afternoon classics. It's about forty minutes from the cottage.
There is something genuinely lovely about a single-screen cinema that has survived everything the multiplex era could throw at it. The Ultimate Picture Palace (the UPP, to locals) has been showing films on Cowley Road since 1911, making it one of the oldest continuously operating cinemas in England. The building is small, a little eccentric, and completely without pretension. You buy your ticket, settle into a proper seat, and watch a film the way films were meant to be watched: in the dark, with strangers, giving it your full attention.
The programming is what sets it apart. You'll find the best new independent and foreign-language releases alongside repertory screenings, cult favourites, and the occasional surprise. Cowley Road itself is worth the trip: Oxford's most interesting street for food, with everything from Vietnamese to Ethiopian within a few minutes' walk. Make an evening of it. Catch a film, then eat somewhere you wouldn't find in the guidebooks.
“Skip the big cinemas in town. The UPP is the real thing: one screen, no adverts, and the kind of place where the person selling your ticket genuinely loves film.”
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.