The text and routes in these mapping apps are based on content in my blog where you can find the updated versions of the routes and notes on the landscape, history and things to watch out for. Link www.pootler.co.uk.
This is a pleasant, peaceful and undemanding route. Starting from Oxford Station, there is a short climb out of the town and the road into and out of Oxford is busy. Thereafter it is ride along mostly minor roads in flat, arable countryside in the Thames and Windrush valleys. It visits the market towns of Eynsham and Witney before turning south across the flat clay farming landscape of the Thames Valley, to cross the river at Tadpole Bridge. From there is a climb of around 35m onto the Golden Ridge, which separates the modern Thames Valley from the Vale of the White Horse and which you follow back towards Oxford.
Zooming In
Highlights are:
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The flat vistas and wide skies of the Thames Valley.
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Historic and handsome Eynsham and Witney.
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The villages and views across the Valley from the Golden Ridge
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Stanton Harcourt and the Devil’s Quoits, now ‘restored’
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A diverse collection of heroes and villains.
The word ‘diverse’ is not loosely used here. In researching this tour I came across Old Nick, the Patron Saint of Bicester, King George 111, a Grand Prix driver and ‘ex’ of Fergie, King Cnut, Brian May from 'Queen', Tom Yorke from 'Radiohead' and sadly, the Colditz escapee who became a Tory Minister before being assassinated by the IRA and the expert of biological weapons who was found dead in mysterious circumstances in the run up to the Iraqi invasion.
On the blog, there are detailed notes on waypoints and things to see. If your mapping app has not imported these, use this link to go directly to the blog post of the route. I hope these will be more entertaining than the links to dry Wikipedia articles dredged up as POI’s by the mapping apps’ software robots. This cannot give you the exact location for each waypoint but it many cases you won’t need it and at least the information will be up to date!
Link : Pootler Route
Zooming Out
The countryside of the Thames Valley to the west of Oxford is mostly riverine clay sitting on a bed of chalk. There are exceptions; for instance Witney sits on Cornbrash, the dry limestone rubble soil that corn thrives on. The Golden Ridge is Corallian Limestone, younger than most of the Cotswold stone and made of the crushed remnants of coral reefs. You can see it there in the beautiful honey-coloured stonework on the older houses. It used to be famous for its roses. And look out for fossils!
As you might expect given that this isn’t far from the Stone Age wonderland that is Wiltshire, the area has been occupied for a long time. One legacy is the Devil’s Quoits, near Stanton, which are a Neolithic Henge. Now, following centuries of enclosures, it is a classic ‘planned’ and ‘improved’ landscape with large rectangular fields, drainage, straight(ish) roads, scattered farmsteads and comparatively few footpaths.
Witney still has a medieval layout but was something of an industrial centre once, taking wool from the Cotswolds with fulling mills running on water power from the Windrush and easy access to London by road. Blankets made there became famous and prized around the world, used in Nelson’s navy and strapped to cowboy’s saddles. They even have an exhibition dedicated to them!
Context is all, and on the blog you will also find posts on the rich and complicated human and topographical history of the area as a whole, ranging from the early occupation, the changing agricultural landscape, the geomorphology of the chalk country, the buildings and anything else that moves me.
Link Pootler : Other Stuff
Route Tips
If your app provides notes on the road surfaces etc. keep in mind that they are automatically generated and only as good as the underlying mapping. In this case the whole tour is on road and should present no problems. Believe no other. So my main tip is, if you want to eat at the Trout on Tadpole Bridge, take your gold card.
