Ride start: Oxford at 09:00, Grove at 09:00 or Burford at 11:00

A ride with many options!  Groups will ride from Oxford, Wantage and Witney to arrive at Huffkins in Burford for elevenses.  We’ll then ride out 10-15 miles to Bourton-on-the-Water for lunch and then back to Burford.  

Bourton-on-the-Water provides a choice of venues for lunch, depending on how many and how hungry we are. 

The options start with how you get to Burford.  Rmember you’ll need to get back too, so options 1 or 2 are about 70 miles cycling in total.

1) Riding from Oxford starting at about 0900 from Broad Street outside Campus Stores, led by Robin Tucker (20-25 miles)

2) Riding from Grove near Wantage starting at about 0900 from Old Mill Hall (about 25 miles) – See http://www.ctcwantage.org.uk for specific details and route, led by John Talbot.

3) Riding from Witney starting at 0930 from the Buttercross, led by Jon Gammage (see Witney page).

4) Drive or use public transport to Burford – meet us at Huffkins bakery (right hand side) at 1100

Other options are:

5,6&7) Ride from Oxford, Wantage or Witney to Burford for elevenses and head straight back. 

Note the original plan was to co-ordinate this ride with CTC Cheltenham, but unfortunately this will not now be possible.

The route link is for the Oxford to Burford part.  The PDFs cover both this and the Burford-Bourton-Burford part.  For this we’ll go out via Windrush and Sherborne, and back via Great Rissington and Great Barrington – great!

Ride report

Three riders from Wantage, and Robin riding solo from Oxford were first to arrive at Huffkins.  They had a BOGOF offer on small lardy cakes, so we cleaned them out of those and as we were scoffing, a good sized group of riders from Witney arrived to swell the group to a healthy number.

As we were just about to leave for Bourton-on-the-Water, Richard arrived from Grove, having left about 40mins after the main Wantage group. A couple of the Witney riders headed back whilst the rest of the group headed off for a social ride to Bourton. David suffered a pinch puncture on a pothole on the descent but this was dealt with quickly as the others went off to seek lunch.

As is usual, the village was heaving on a sunny Sunday, so we decided to grab take away baguettes and have a picnic lunch on the grass next to the river. A very pleasant time was had by all and we decided to tackle the steep climb up through Little Rissington before we went our separate ways.

The Wantage group turned right at the top towards the Barringtons as we said farewall to the Witney riders who turned left to Leafield. With no need to go via Burford on the way back we headed towards Filkins. Here we were off of the GPS track and we took a couple of wrong turns even after consulting Robin’s OS map before we found the road to Bampton!

We stopped for an ice cream in Bampton before tackling Buckland Hill and the fast run in to Grove.

A very enjoyable ride, a shame the Wantage group was rather small.

Thanks to John Talbot of Wantage for the above report.