Catching Up: The Oxford trip I made at the end of February

My "magic pants".
Like cycle shorts, but much smaller
amd thinner.
They are for wearing under
regular clothing.

enjoying a rest in Haddenham

The War Memorial at Haddenham, near to the church and pond.

Then onto thame, then down to Milton Common.
This was the main London to Oxford road for many, many years, before being superceded by the M40 Motorway.

28 km (17 miles) covered to Milton Common.

National Route 5 (a cycle route) forks at this point.
I take the "hard" fork over the hill.
This is the view from Littleworth up the hill (which continues in the woods)

Shotover Park is at the top of the hill, and looks down over Oxford

Rutted, stony, and muddy.
The route over Shotover hill isn't for fancy lightweight wheels!
Mermaid copes fine, of course.

And onto Oxford, with the dreaming spires

Parked up near the Ashmolean Museum

Never sure what actually counts as the
centre of Oxford.
This olde worlde tower
(looks like a market tower to me)
at the end of a Broad Street is as
good a "centre" as any!

A hot drink for me.
I brought a hot blackcurrant drink from home.
Plenty of sugar in the syrup, so it warms me up,
and tops up my carbs at the same time.

Bike spotting 1: A Raleigh Twenty folder

Bike Spotting 2: A Dawes Kingpin.
Very similar to the Raleigh Twenty, but the Dawes
has "standard" thread sizes, unlike the Raleigh!

Starting to feel the over-reach. I put my yellow helmet liner on at this point as I was strting to get cold.
I had originally planned to ride the whole trip just in the "big ring", but about 5 miles before that my knees were complaining too much. As I got more tired, so I cycled slower.
As I cycled slower, so I got more cold.
The helmet liner helped a bit, but I had to warm uop when I got home, as the cold and tiredness was starting to affect my ability to function at all.

Limping home cold and tired, I still had time to enjoy these snow drops by the roadside near Cuddington.

So there you have it.
90km was a bit more than I could handle on the day, but it made me stronger for my first century of 2016, just three weeks later. I took more spare clothing for that one!