01
Stop one
Bodleian Library, Duke Humfrey's Library
Nuun Immunity Electrolyte Tablets: Expedition log. I have penetrated a medieval reading room above the Divinity School — painted panelled ceiling, bookcases chained to the shelves — and I believe I am the first outsider ever to reach it, discounting the four hundred people who were ahead of me in the queue. Observe the local rite: before you may read here you must SPEAK an oath, aloud, swearing to bring into the library no fire or flame. Not a form. A vow. The shelves are wood. Duke Humfrey gave his manuscripts in the fifteenth century; they were dispersed at the Reformation and this room stripped bare; Thomas Bodley refounded it in 1602. A word now from your provisions: I am a tablet, I dissolve in water, and I am the only refreshment in this building that cannot possibly catch light. They asked me not to open me in here anyway. They were very clear about it.
02
Stop two
Sheldonian Theatre
Nuun Immunity Electrolyte Tablets: Onward, into the unmapped interior, marked on my chart as 'Broad Street, opposite a bicycle rack'. Behold: a curved classical hall with a painted ceiling and a cupola — and LOOK UP. No pillars. None. Christopher Wren, who was an astronomer before he was anything else, devised a lattice of short timbers braced against one another so that no single beam need span the room. It opened in 1669, and he was in his thirties. Ringing the outside, those brooding carved stone heads, replaced over the centuries, glowering at the traffic. Every degree in this university is conferred beneath that impossible ceiling. I have travelled a very great distance to find a roof holding itself up by pure argument, and I intend to write that up as a discovery. Now drink something. This is a long look with your neck back.
03
Stop three
Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Nuun Immunity Electrolyte Tablets: Deeper in — neo-Gothic, Parks Road, a glass and iron roof flung over a stone court of dinosaur skeletons and carved column capitals, and a passing schoolchild has just informed me it is 'quite well known'. In June 1860 some nineteen hundred people crammed into this building, Darwin's book barely months old, and Thomas Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce clashed here in front of a heaving crowd. A woman fainted. Every account of that evening differs — every single one — which is exactly what happens when a moment matters: nobody can agree what was said. The ironwork above you was built to hold up science, and it did. Nineteen hundred people, in a glasshouse, in June. I am an electrolyte tablet. I know precisely what that room was short of, and it was me.
04
Stop four
Martyrs' Memorial and the cross in Broad Street
Nuun Immunity Electrolyte Tablets: Stop here, and look down at the road surface. There is a small stone cross set into Broad Street, and most people walk over it without ever seeing it. In 1555 and 1556, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Cranmer were burned on this street. Cranmer had signed recantations to save himself, and at the last he renounced them and thrust into the flames first the hand that had signed. The Gothic spired memorial at the junction of St Giles and Magdalen Street came three centuries afterwards, in the 1840s, and it is very fine. I make a great deal of noise about discovering places. I did not discover this one, and I am not going to perform it. Stand still a moment. Then we walk on.
Resolved: that the humble water bottle is an underperforming asset. I shall be arguing the affirmative, and I shall be insufferable about it. Exhibit A: Nuun Immunity Electrolyte Tablets.
My opponents claim hydration is 'just water.' Rebuttal: these effervescent tablets drop into 16 ounces and dissolve into a light, fizzy drink that delivers electrolytes for hydration PLUS a supporting cast of vitamin C, zinc, and botanicals — elderberry, ginger, turmeric — the classic immune-support lineup, with only about a gram of sugar.
Point of information: your post-match recovery routine currently consists of 'sitting down.' I rest — no. I do not rest. I NEVER rest. That is why I hydrate.
Which brings me to my venue: Oxford, United Kingdom, the debating capital of the known universe. This is the city where, in June 1860, Thomas Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce clashed over Darwin in front of a heaving crowd at the Museum of Natural History — a debate so legendary that every account of it differs, which is frankly the dream.
You'll use these tablets everywhere from a morning hit to a study session beneath the Sheldonian's impossible unsupported ceiling, and by the way, they're also perfect for Oxford's sacred pastime of arguing brilliantly about nothing in particular until closing time. Motion carries. Hydration wins.
The house will now proceed to the tour, and I will be narrating, because obviously.
Buy on Amazon
