Stow-on-the-Wold 2009

Our annual expedition with our select group occurred at the same time, early May. All male party this time, 8 of us stayed at Stow-on-the-Wold YH.

Stow is one of the largest of the Cotswold towns, very quaint with a huge town square, surrounded by some pretty old buildings, the youth hostel being one of them. It's great to visit for a few days, there is a fair bit to see with the outlying villages, all of them exceptionally tidy, beautiful buildings all nicely kept. Racehorses seem to be the main industry around here, together with tourism.

We rode out from Stow each day, the first trip being southwards towards Swindon, we avoided Swindon itself and opted for lunch at Cricklade which proved somewhat difficult to reach as the A419 was in the way and this road was definitely not designed with the humble cyclist in mind.

Our second full day trip was towards Bicester, a flat route apart from the first few miles until we left the Stow area. This was a fairly long day, despite the flat route it was almost 90 miles.Great weather, warm, sunny, no wind for a change. Altogether a tiring day.

The third full day had some of the team preferring to visit Oxford so they went their way and John & I rode out towards Snowshill, then Toddington (station pic above) then to Winchcombe and a superb climb up Dovers Hill to arrive back with a mee 44 miles on the clock.

Our ride home was going to be a flat one after the descent from Snowshill. The temperature noticably improved on the way down and we basked in warm sunshine all the way home.