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We decided to leave the next stage of the Oxfordshire Way for another day, and do a walk we came up with last summer instead: down the canal towpath to Wolvercote, through Wolvercote village to Godstow, a little bit of Thames Path and then across fields to get to Wytham Woods, and then through the woods to the Botley entrance and back into Oxford to catch the bus home.
This clocks in at just over eleven and a half miles, and the first nine miles is really nice. We walk the canal towpath a lot, but I never get tired of it, and it's always interesting to walk through Wolvercote and see if anything has changed since we used to live there. (Surprisingly little, given that it's been nearly 14 years.) After Wolvercote, there's a short but pretty section of the Thames, where we spotted a cormorant today, and then quiet fields and meadows up to the gate into Wytham Woods. Late July isn't the best time of year to walk there; the spring flowers are long gone and the autumn colours are still months away, but it's cool and green and peaceful and surprisingly hilly for Oxford. We ate our lunch on a bench overlooking Farmoor Reservoir and then headed towards Botley along a path with views across Oxford to the JR and Shotover.
Unfortunately, after reaching the Botley entrance to the woods the route follows the A34 slip roads to cross the Botley interchange and reach the Botley Road, which is not a particularly appealing way to walk into Oxford. After failing to renew our railcard as we passed the station because the ticket office was closed we headed up Walton Street, partly because that seemed like a pleasanter option than walking straight into the centre of Oxford on a weekend in July and partly because we thought it would be nice to pop into G&D's in Little Clarendon Street for an ice-cream. Which it would have been, except that Little Clarendon Street turned out to have some kind of festival going on, and was full of people and stalls and music playing through a PA and was really more than I could cope with, even if G&D's hadn't been really busy (I had been feeling very anxious before we went out anyway, so I suspect my reserves were still low and Unexpected Crowds, just when I'd been starting to relax after getting away from the worst of central Oxford, proved too much for them). I do feel slightly bad about swearing at the cyclist who rode straight through the red light on the Woodstock Road pelican crossing as I was trying to cross it to reach the bus stop, although then again perhaps people who cycle through red lights on pelican crossings deserve to be sworn at by normally mild-mannered middle-aged women who are verging on crowd-induced meltdown.
In any case, having got home and calmed down again, my verdict is that it's a very pleasant 9 miles somewhat let down by the last mile and a half, though that might have been less unpleasant if I'd been in a better frame of mind or it hadn't been peak tourist season.
This clocks in at just over eleven and a half miles, and the first nine miles is really nice. We walk the canal towpath a lot, but I never get tired of it, and it's always interesting to walk through Wolvercote and see if anything has changed since we used to live there. (Surprisingly little, given that it's been nearly 14 years.) After Wolvercote, there's a short but pretty section of the Thames, where we spotted a cormorant today, and then quiet fields and meadows up to the gate into Wytham Woods. Late July isn't the best time of year to walk there; the spring flowers are long gone and the autumn colours are still months away, but it's cool and green and peaceful and surprisingly hilly for Oxford. We ate our lunch on a bench overlooking Farmoor Reservoir and then headed towards Botley along a path with views across Oxford to the JR and Shotover.
Unfortunately, after reaching the Botley entrance to the woods the route follows the A34 slip roads to cross the Botley interchange and reach the Botley Road, which is not a particularly appealing way to walk into Oxford. After failing to renew our railcard as we passed the station because the ticket office was closed we headed up Walton Street, partly because that seemed like a pleasanter option than walking straight into the centre of Oxford on a weekend in July and partly because we thought it would be nice to pop into G&D's in Little Clarendon Street for an ice-cream. Which it would have been, except that Little Clarendon Street turned out to have some kind of festival going on, and was full of people and stalls and music playing through a PA and was really more than I could cope with, even if G&D's hadn't been really busy (I had been feeling very anxious before we went out anyway, so I suspect my reserves were still low and Unexpected Crowds, just when I'd been starting to relax after getting away from the worst of central Oxford, proved too much for them). I do feel slightly bad about swearing at the cyclist who rode straight through the red light on the Woodstock Road pelican crossing as I was trying to cross it to reach the bus stop, although then again perhaps people who cycle through red lights on pelican crossings deserve to be sworn at by normally mild-mannered middle-aged women who are verging on crowd-induced meltdown.
In any case, having got home and calmed down again, my verdict is that it's a very pleasant 9 miles somewhat let down by the last mile and a half, though that might have been less unpleasant if I'd been in a better frame of mind or it hadn't been peak tourist season.
