Oxford Cotswold Dawn Run

A 215 km loop

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Why this ride

Leave the city behind and spend the day on roads with texture. Out of London and back again: 215 km, roughly 3 h 54 in the saddle. The plan has 1 food stop marked.

Roadbook

1. London start

   London is the one place on the map where the best advice is to leave the bike at the edge. The centre around Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square is a maze of one-way streets, bus lanes, taxis and tourists, and parking is limited and expensive. The city also has a congestion charge and a low-emission zone, whose rules for motorcycles have changed over the years, so check the current conditions for your own machine before you ride in. For a start and finish, a quiet side street or a secure garage on the outskirts is a better plan.

   What you are stopping for here is history on a large scale. St Martin-in-the-Fields, a handsome eighteenth-century church with a tall steeple and a classical portico, stands at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square, and its crypt hosts a café, a gallery and a brass-rubbing centre. It is famous for its lunchtime concerts and for its work with homeless people. Across the road, Nelson's Column rises over the square, with its bronze lions, and the National Gallery stretches along the north side.

   The city has some 7.5 million people, and it is never quite finished with itself. Roman Londinium was a muddy trading post on the Thames, and the medieval city grew into a great port, burning down in 1666 and rebuilding in brick and stone. Westminster, a short walk south, holds the Palace of Parliament and the Abbey, where English monarchs have been crowned for nearly a thousand years. The riding here is entirely about getting out: the A3, A4 and A40 lead to quiet lanes in Surrey, the Chilterns and Kent, and a very early start on a Sunday morning makes it easy.

   Fuel is available, but it is among the most expensive in the country, so top up on the outskirts. For a drink, a pub in the side streets off Whitehall, with its brass and etched glass, is as London as it gets. And when the light fades, the square is full of buskers, pigeons and people, and the lamps along the Mall glow.

2. Oxford food

   Oxford is where you want to arrive late morning, when the commuters have settled and the tourists have not quite taken over the pavements.

   Be honest with yourself about the riding, though: it is a city. The ring road is quick but busy, the centre is a thicket of bus lanes, bollards and one-way streets, and parking for a motorcycle takes a little planning. The reward for the effort is that you can leave the machine and walk. The Cherwell and the Thames, which Oxford calls the Isis for part of its length, both slip through the town, and a short stroll takes you to meadows, punts and willow trees that feel miles from the traffic.

   The university is the obvious story, with its first teaching recorded in the eleventh century and colleges added over the next several hundred years, but Oxford has another identity out in Cowley, a few kilometres east. That is where William Morris built cars in the early twentieth century, and the Mini is still made there today. The city sits between two worlds, scholars on one side and engineers on the other, and it is a rare place where you can see a medieval quad and a car plant in one afternoon.

   Fuel is no problem anywhere around the edge of town, and the best advice is to fill up before you come in rather than hunt for a station among the one-way systems. Coffee is everywhere, from tiny independent counters to the covered market stalls. When you are ready to leave, the Cotswold edge begins within half an hour to the west and north, and that is where the riding turns lovely again: stone villages, rolling lanes and the kind of gentle hills that make a rider forget the traffic. Come on a weekday morning if you can, and leave before the school run.

3. London finish

Where this sits

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