The thought receptacle
Stephen's mental dustbin
Mon, 04 Apr 2011
The little one: Henley to Oxford
A couple of weekends ago, after the boat races at Henley, I cycled back to Oxford. After a hair-raisingly fast-and-straight road out towards the Chilterns, the right-turn out towards the Assendons brings a nice undulating slice of Chilterns. After a while there's a gruellingly incessant climb, followed by a very fast descent. The route is following the B480 almost the whole way. It's nice and quiet to begin with, but gets busier (and wider) nearer to Oxford. The bit around Chalgrove airfield is particularly ho-hum and basically like a quiet A road. There is a nice reprise of quietness and narrowness around Stadhampton and Chiselhampton, before the final grind into Oxford.
Stadhampton has a particularly lovely green, and Chiselhampton isn't bad either. However, Stadhampton also marks the place where I met a cavalcade of traffic coming off the M40 (presumably not post-races traffic as I had presumed at the time, unless they took a very odd route out of Henley). On getting back into Oxford, I took the opportunity to extend my knowledge of cross-town routes in the south and east to reach my fashionable lower west-side abode.
In case you wondered: the route is 44.5km or 27.8mi, and the elevation gain is 412.8m.
