July 10th: Oxford to Reading

You can't visit Oxford and not at least see the University grounds, so our first order of business was to ride to the University grounds and at least look at the grass. It was brown, indicating that they'd have a fairly dry summer so far, even though the forecast kept threatening rain!

My initial thought for the day was that we'd ride to Reading or Wokingham. When scouting out places to stay, I'd looked as far ahead as Sandhurst, but the forecast was calling for rain on the next day. While I wouldn't trust any long range forecast for weather in England, this one looked fairly solid. If it was going to rain, you want to be in a big city. If the weather was nice, however, country houses were usually cooler, quieter, cheaper, and much more bike friendly. Balanced against that was that Bowen was still obsessed with duck for dinner!

After leaving the University grounds, Komoot did a great job of routing us along side streets and even city parks to lead us out of town, but the at the science park dumped us right onto A4674, another unpleasant main road with a lousy sidepath. I looked on my device for alternates, but sure enough there was no alternative. I did spot a quieter alternate once we'd gotten to Dorchester on Thames, but Komoot was already planning to take us there, so we just bore with the noisy highway until we exited.

Near Wallingford, we resumed the noisy A road, but I spotted a bike route sign and grabbed it, riding into Wallingford at a side street. Once in Wallingford, Bowen said he was getting tired, so I asked an adult leader of a group of uniformed school kids if there was a city park. They directed me to it and Bowen happily played there for a good half hour before being ready on the bike. It was obvious that the day before had worn him out, so I confirmed a booking in Reading rather than Wokingham or any place further on. 

Past Wallingford, the bike route now took us into the Chiltern Cycleway, and became shaded and pretty throughout! At Checkerdon, Bowen started getting hungry, and we doubled back a bit looking for a signed village store only to be told that the store had been turned into a house! We were told to head over to Stoke Row for food, and given the choice between the bakery and the pub, Bowen went for the pub, the Cherry Tree Inn. The weather was a little windy but nice enough to eat outside, though the food was not great, with the pulled pork sandwich being too dry.

Having been so fortified, we finished the ride into Reading, which started behaving like an English cycle path once we got into the vicinity of the town: irrational twists and turns, terminating into a city park path that was gated by a staircase! "This is not tandem friendly! Hmph!" said Bowen in a huff. If only I had a video camera for that little remark --- he looked so cute as he said that!

We were a little too early for our AirBnB, but no matter: on the River Thames we found a playground with a Zipline!

It was very warm, and I was glad that we had put on sunscreen earlier in the day. When Bowen was done with the playground, we rode the last few minutes to the AirBnB, where our host, JF greeted us with surprise: "I didn't expect your son to be 5 years old!" We told him about our situation and he graciously agreed to let us decide the next day whether we were going to stay in Reading for 2 nights. I put Bowen through the shower quickly, and then we headed out to look for ice cream.

Reading had a huge downtown shopping mall full of stores, including many well known ones from the USA. We had ice cream and then Bowen decided he wanted to see the new Spiderman movie. We paid exorbitant English prices for the movie, and then Bowen wanted to walk out after an hour. I actually was enjoying the movie so I persuaded him to come back in with me after visiting the bathroom to finish watching the movie.

After the movie, we walked back, using the Tesco along the way to buy breakfast. Bowen suddenly needed to use a bathroom, and we stopped at Kings Chef, which was actually reviewed quite nicely on Google, so we bought takeout duck noodles, spicy fried rice (which turned out not to be very spicy), and string beans. On account of my speaking mandarin to the cashier, she threw in some spicy duck wings as well.

After dinner, Bowen was tired, and said he'd rather have a zero day the next day. I told him we were expecting rain anyway, so we would very likely stay 2 nights here. "Yippie!"

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July 9th: Winchcombe to Oxford

The morning took us past the entrance to the Sudeley Castle, which wasn't open for us to visit this early. Immediately past the castle, the road climbed steeply out of Winchcombe towards Guiting Wood and the village of Guiting Power (which wasn't actually a power plant!). The steep climb at grades in excess of 12-14% felt terrible, and I was mortified when we arrived at the top and I discovered that we had a rear flat tire!

All that riding on random dirt paths often lined with thorny plants must have taken its toll, for as I checked the tire casing, I found and dug up no less than 3 thorns from the tire. I found one hole in the tube and patched it, but had no confidence that I'd patched the only hole in the tube, so inserted one of my two brand-new-in-box spare tubes into the rear tire. While fixing the flat, a couple of cyclists rolled up and helpfully stopped to talk about the upcoming rest of the ride ("You've done the toughest hill in the Costwolds," they said.) and even help lift the rear of the frame so I could insert the rear wheel back in. I ran a few itineraries past them, and they said, "We think the Costwolds are way prettier than Oxford shire, so I think you should stop in Whitney, the last stop before entering Oxford Shire."

The Costwolds were pretty, and I'd picked the route we were on because Scarlet had ridden in them in the past and recommended that I visited Upper and Lower Slaughter, which were very pretty villages. The route while filled with climbing took us on mostly backroads and bike paths that were untraffic'd, and gave us vistas of the surrounds.

Upper Slaughter turned out to be nothing special, but the centre of Lower Slaughter was incredibly pretty, with a stream next to a mill, and a large wading pool with ice cream! At this point, I knew we were going to make Oxford or Witney that day, and first booked a hotel in Witney but after talking to the ice cream vendor changed to an Oxford AirBnB. Part of it was driven by Bowen's recent obsession with duck. After I told him that Witney's hotel had a swimming pool but no duck, while it would be possible to get good duck in Oxford, he opted for Oxford. I told him that this was not a decision we could reverse once we made the AirBnB reservation and he said he was OK with it.

We messed around with routes for a bit, having various wrong turns with Google Maps before switching over to Komoot for navigation. That route took us to Burton-Upon-Water for a picnic lunch  with our favorite pastries right next to the stream running through the town and the motor museum. You know the place is touristy when you start to see Asian tourists walking around with selfie-sticks. While the motor museum might have been interesting, we still had a fair distance to ride to Oxford, so I chose discretion and we got back on the bike right after lunch. The rest of the ride in the Costwolds were beautiful, and the Komoot provide route always chose to keep us on pretty bike paths and forest roads rather than the main A-road, but upon exiting the Costwolds at Minster Lovell, it dumped us onto a B road. We stopped at a petrol station for some quick snacks and rode on through Witney.

Past Witney, the route took us onto the A40, which had a sidepath that was officially designated a bike route. Unfortunately, English sidepaths along major motor ways are very neglected pieces of pavement, with lots of narrow traversals with overgrown bushes and other leafy plants to scratch you. The path is also inconsistent, occasionally switching from one side of the pavement to another for no reason whatsoever. The occasional relief when a buffer area was built between the bike path and the main road were far and few between. I contemplated stopping to try to find a better route but decided it was just easier to ride to Oxford as quickly as possible. In fact, once in Oxford on a Sunday, the roads were clear and reasonably empty. We found our AirBnB with no problem. Our host was a Chinese family that ran the only Korean restaurant in town. When they heard about Bowen's penchant for a duck dinner, they had no problem recommending a place, but it wasn't within walking distance, though cycling was easy. Well, the solution was to go eat before taking a bath that day.

We got to the restaurant at 5:00pm, and true to being a Chinese restaurant, they were happy to serve us dinner. We ordered lots of food and ate it all, having had the longest day of the trip so far. People often ask us if Bowen got tired after cycling all day, but the reality was, after we bought breakfast and dropped it off at the AirBnB, he was still so energized that he asked me to take him to the playground with a zipline that he had spotted on the way to dinner! I hadn't even noticed the zipline, but he'd seen it and of course I wouldn't break my promise to let him zipline whenever we saw a playground with one. He got no less than 20 runs on the zipline before other kids started lining up to use it as well. Having been spoiled by having ziplines on the trip all to himself, he shared a few times before going off to play with other toys in the playground. After the trip I would ask him which of the ziplines he liked best, and he would say "The one in Oxford."
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July 8th: Worcester to Winchcombe

After the crazy random elevation changes and single-track unpaved bike path of the previous day, I was delighted to discover that the bike path through Worcester used the old towpath along the Worcester-Birmingham Canal. These bike paths, while narrow and with several bridge traversals that required me to duck, never had insane grade changes, and were quiet and calm on a Saturday morning.

After reluctantly leaving the canal path, we stopped at the edge of Worcester where there was a nice playground which unfortunately did not have a zipline. It was also lonely and deserted on a Saturday morning, so Bowen didn't actually want to spend too much time there.

The actual on-road riding was on fairly small roads with relatively little traffic, taking us through towns such as Elmley Castle that while having signs for the castle didn't actually grant us any views of it! In the town of Pershore, we stopped to try to find a replacement sweat band, but couldn't find any. Near Ashton Under Hill, a group of cyclists caught us, including a girl on a trailer bike towed by her dad who was riding a bicycle with an electric assist. Bowen immediately sped up, which automatically meant that we had to ride with them and ignore our GPS route.

They were headed to a cafe in Winchcombe, so we joined them on a rolling hills ride. They had to slow down for us a bit, but they were very friendly and told us about the steam railway in Winchcombe which Bowen was sure to be interested in. This turned out to be the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway, which was apparently the longest steam railway in England.  After lunch, I went to the hardware store and bought a tea-towel, intending to cut it up so that I could have a sweat band. It was big enough that I could make several! We were too early to check-in to the AirBnB, but Carol was nice enough to leave our bike and bags with them and even drove us to the station so we wouldn't miss the next train!

The steam train was pretty fun, including a stop where they had signal boxes which Bowen was happy to pull to make the flags move. We also got to ride in a rail car where you could see the driver steer the car. When the driver hit the end of the track, he'd actually remove the control sticks and move them to the opposite end of the car to start driving back!

That night, Bowen wanted duck again. After consulting with our hostess, I determined that the local Chinese restaurant would be terrible, so we went down to the high end supermarket and bought pre-marinated duck to bake in the AirBnB oven. We ate well, and it was fairly cheap, so it was a win-win all around.

The next day was a Sunday, which meant that we shouldn't have trouble finding lodging provided we exited the Costwolds. But to make sure, I sent several inquiries to a few AirBnB locations, and checked booking.com for alternatives in case we couldn't make Oxford. We had more choices than we needed, so I decided to make our decision after we got over the first several hills of the day to see how we felt the next day.

That evening, Carol gave us various children's books for Bowen to read. To my surprise, he picked the kids' abridged version of The Secret Garden and made me read it to him in one sitting before going to sleep.

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July 7th: Bridgnorth to Worcester

Under partly cloudy skies we departed from Brignorth, following the signs along National Bike Route 45. At the first intersection where the bike route signs differed from the GPS directions, I decided to take a chance and ride the bike route, as the road looked smaller and quieter. To my surprise this was a mistake:

The bike route quickly devolved into single track, and I hoped for relief when the bike route finally re-intersected with our GPS route, only to discover that the GPS route at this point also took up the bike route single-track around the Chelmarsh reservoir. The single track was mostly rideable, but the stinging nettles by the side of the path would occasionally brush against my bare legs and hurt! Fortunately, Bowen was wearing pants over his bike shorts and was spared some of the agony.

After the single track was over, the route descended and brought us onto Hampton Lodge, where the Severn Valley Railway had brought us to the evening before! The path was guarded by leaning gates that were narrow at the top and wide at the bottom so our panniers would clear, but still necessitate a stop and wriggle to get through. Once on the railroad grade, however, the path was very pleasant, shaded and woody with no cars in sight.

In the town of Highley, the bike route went on the Highley Trail, which dumped us out into a parking lot with a sandy playground. Bowen took some time to spend on the playground, which would warm and cool depending on whether we had cloud cover.

To my surprise, after the playground the bike route did some gentle climbing and then quickly descended back down to the river. At the river, the road dead-ended, but it turned out that we had missed a bike route sign directing us to get off the bike and get onto a pedestrian bridge over the Severn river.

The bridge was pretty, but a group of passing cyclists warned us of the steep grade ahead. We climbed the grade, which while steep was nowhere near as hard as the single-track hiking trails we'd already traversed that day. In fact, we caught up with the group when they rested at an inn after the steepest section, whereupon they said, "We did not expect you to catch us!" I took the opportunity to get them to shoot pictures of Bowen and I while we were riding, something that happened only rarely.

In the town of Bewdley, the route looked like it was going to cross the river again, but it was near lunch time, so I stopped a pedestrian and asked about a local bakery, whereupon he walked us to the nearest one! There, we bought a selection of savoury and sweet pastries, and asked about a picnic area. "Just walk across the street, through the visitor center/museum, and there's a nice park there!" Before doing so, I stopped at the local pharmacy to buy a replacement toothbrush for the one left behind at Market Drayton.

Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Gardens turned out to be a wonderful place to have a picnic. With shaded benches, a garden pool, gorgeously tendered flower gardens, and even statues of bunnies, it was very pretty. There's a frequent statement that children don't appreciate scenery, but Bowen has always liked flowers, and was happy to look at them after finishing both his sweet and savoury pastries. Passerbys would stop and ask us about the bike and where we were going, and never failed to be impressed that we were on a long trek from Manchester to London. One even made sure that I understood that Hindhead was past London and we'd have to double-back to catch our train, he was so concerned that we didn't know what we were doing.

After lunch, the ride took us into Burlish Top Nature Reserve, where more single-track riding awaited us. Fortunately, this wasn't lined with stinging nettles this time, and we made reasonably good time. Past Hartlebury, the route took us on the side of a busy A road once more, which meant that the riverside bike path alongside thee Drotwich Canal provided us with relief when we found it.

 To our chagrin, the bike path soon left the river, through a series of increasingly rough hiking trails, and finally terminated in a steep inclined which forced Bowen to dismount and me to get off the bike and push with all my effort (I was straining so hard that Bowen felt compelled to help push) to get off the bike path, where at the top we saw signs confirming that yes, we were indeed still on National Bike Route #45, and tourists following the route were indeed expected to get off and push! I don't know who the people are who designate the National Bike Routes in England, but they clearly have no expectations that anyone's going to ride tandems on these trails. They might be well-signed, but reasonable they are not!

Fortunately, that was the last of the crazy bike routes for the day, and the approach into Worcester on the bike route had us on quiet side streets without many grade changes until we got to our AirBnB. Our hostess, Jain, was clearly in the middle of either a remodel or a move, and was busy clearing the house. She was happy to do laundry for us, which is a sign that the major hotel chains are missing the boat when it comes to servicing customers: for the rest of the trip, we would abandon hotels and stay with AirBnBs whenver possible because when you stay in somebody's home, you almost always got access to a laundry machine, which is a big deal when you're touring with a 5-year old. While adults might not get their clothing so dirty that hand-washing was straight-forward, a 5-year old manages to get stains on their clothing that a hand-washer would be hard put to fix. I asked Jain when the shops downtown closed, and she asked me what I was looking for. When I mentioned that I needed a USB charger (so our devices could charge even when I was using the CPAP machine), she didn't even think twice and pulled out an old Apple charger for us. Wow.

We walked to the local supermarket but on the way there, saw a newly opened bike shop. I asked if they would take a look at our shifting since I'd failed for 3 days in a row now to fix the indexing on the tandem. They said they'd do it while we waited, and so we brought the tandem to them, bought ice cream, and visited the local playground which was full of kids since it was a Friday afternoon and it was late enough that school was now out. Bowen's been spoiled since he'd gotten all the playgrounds to himself thus far, and said: "This playground is too crowded!" I learned that school lets out in England somewhere around mid July to late July, and only starts in September, so American school districts usually let out earlier and start school earlier than English school districts by 6 weeks. This is nice, because Americans vacationing in Europe during the summer don't have to compete with locals for lodging, etc.

When the bike was returned to us the shifting now felt better than when we'd left the USA, so I was happy to pay the fee. We then took the bus downtown, where we bought some Hydrocortisone cream for the stinging nettles, and sat in a cafe drinking drinks while searching for our next destination on AirBnB. Booking.com wanted $500 for some hotels that were in pretty poor places for touring, so I compromised on an AirBnB in Winchcombe, which was some 27 miles away. I figured we could make up the deficit on another day, and risking no lodging on a Saturday night wasn't acceptable, especially since we knew that the Costwold was heavily touristed.

Bowen had a hankering for duck, so we went to the Singapore Restaurant in Worcester, which actually had pretty good reviews and delivered duck in plum sauce that Bowen devoured with unusual enthusiasm.

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July 6th: Market Drayton to Bridgnorth

Our second day started with a great breakfast served by the Four Alls Inn, and we got going by 9:00am. South of Market Drayton, we rode through tiny towns, avoiding main roads. We had been told to avoid Telfords, but the tourist information center the day before had told us that Ironbridge is a good destination, since it was the home of the industrial revolution, and would have lots to do. That sounded intriguing, so we planned to visit.

Near Ironbridge, however, I chose to ignore the GPS and follow the street signs, which turned out to be a mistake. To direct car drivers to big parking lots, the road signs would lead you into Madley, which wasn't at all what you wanted. We recovered by asking a couple of pedestrians, and made it to visit Iron Bridge.

There, we visited the museum of the gorge, which included model displays and a film outlining the area. There was a coop supermarket near the museum, and we bought lunch to eat at the nearby park, which was beautiful and featured a playground.

After lunch and a playground stop, we rode onto the bridge, and visited the tollhouse at the other side.

 From there, the bike route signs pointed us along the old railroad track which then abruptly terminated just a couple of miles down the road, with the bike route sign pointing up the hill, signed for Bridgnorth. We would discover later on that there was a disused rail road path that was mapped, but not signed!

The resultant climb, coming late in the afternoon heat wore us out, and by the time we rode into Bridgnorth we were ready to stop. At the tourist information center, we again found no one to help us, except a couple of staff members who told us that it wasn't in their job description but pointed us at a list of B&Bs in the window. I called a few that all turned out to be closed, and eventually just booked The Croft on booking.com.

Upon checking in, I discovered that I'd left my MoKo travel charger in the Four Alls Inn! I fortunately still had the rapid charger for my Moto G5, but I still needed a plug adapter. Fortunatlely, the inn keeper had a stash of plug adapters (some of which no doubt were left behind by other customers) and simply gave us one. "It's a small town, so I wouldn't even know where you could buy one of these!" he said.

After asking where the nearest ice cream shop was, we walked to it and bought ice cream. Then we walked over to the "cliff railway" in town, which turned out to be a funicular taking us down to the river side, where a 15 minute walk took us to a bike shop next to the Severn Valley Railway. The bike shop told us that the next day's trip to Worcester was going to be hilly, and surprisingly enough couldn't help us with a good route. They claimed that the bike route was no good, and suggested staying on the roads, but all of the roads looked like they would be busy ones not suited for cycling.

I was reminded that the next day was a Friday, so I'd have to start searching for lodging early, preferably today. In fact, Saturday was going to be an issue as well! As a result, I started putting in queries on AirBnB, since Worcester was a big city and I could expect to find reasonable lodging there. I sent a few queries and hoped for a reply.

The Severn Valley railway turned out to be a steam train, though we arrived only in time to catch the last train of the day, with a round trip to Hampton Lodge (the first stop) being the only possible round trip we could do. So we paid for the ticket and hopped on the heritage railway. Bowen wasn't about to pass up a train ride no matter how short it was.

Upon returning from the train ride, the sky started becoming overcast with the thunderstorm in the forecast becoming more believable after the heat of the afternoon. We discovered there was a bridge from the railway station that took us halfway up the hill to where the town castle grounds were, which we took advantage of rather than walking back to the funicular.

The castle grounds/city walls garden turned out to be beautiful, with a mini bridge, wishing well, flowers, and a monument. We walked along side it, and Bowen threw in a coin to make a wish. He started getting tired, so I carried him into town where we looked for a restaurant to have dinner. We settled on Casa Ruiz, a Spanish tapa place that served excellent food in small dishes that suited Bowen. He was very excited about an impending thunderstorm, and quite disappointed that it didn't materialize.

At bedtime, I discovered that I'd forgotten another thing at the Four Alls Inn, which was Bowen's toothbrush. Luckily, I'd brought along the teeth-cleaning gum, so that's what I gave him, but I was determined to buy a replacement toothbrush the next day. I was not having a good tour in terms of leaving stuff behind that I didn't want to leave behind!

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