The original intention was to cycle a 50 mile circular route round the villages east of Oxford however it turned out slightly longer than expected. We started off quite well and quickly cycled into Islip, 6 miles from home. The next few villages were equally easy to cycle to, they were well signposted and we seemed to be making relatively good progress. Then we took a wrong turn in a place called Middle Claydon which resulted in climbing two hills in error, visiting both Winslow and Granborough, before getting back on track (and taking the correct route up, of course, another hill). These wrong turns added to the length of our journey and tired us out quite a lot.

Aside from poor navigation skills, our other problem was needing the toilet quite desperately for mile upon mile. The pubs never seemed to be open in any of the villages we passed through and in some cases they appeared to have closed down.

Windmill at Quainton

Fortunately a nice man in Quainton let us use his toilet which was a relief in more ways than one. Another man in Quainton kindly offered to make us a cup of tea when we were sitting having our lunch. Quainton is a very pretty place with a lovely windmill next to the green.

Unfortunately our wrong turns added to the length of our ride and the last 10 miles were cycled in complete darkness. The batteries in our front lights went flat and of course we didn’t have spares (not expecting to be cycling in the dark we didn’t think about it). We were left with our backup Knog lights which were not really bright enough to see the unlit country road, resulting in many unpleasant bumps into pot holes that would have been avoided in the daylight. At this point we were cycling extremely slowly down seemingly endless country roads. When we finally got somewhere (after what seemed like miles of nowhere) that somewhere was not Oxford but Islip again. The distance on our cycling computers read 60.5 miles, we had missed the turn off to Elsfield and Oxford and appeared to be going back round the loop. At this point we decided that enough was enough and called a taxi.