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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Wednesday 3 June 2015

New Cotswolds walk - Kingham to Charlbury


17.7km (10.9m); toughness 2/10 mainly flat along easy tracks.

Trains: London Paddington 10.22 (Slough 10.36) arrives Kingham 11.46

Return trains from Charlbury  to London Paddington at 17.10, 18.38 19.43, 21.05. Journey time around 1hr 25mins although it varies slightly.

Buy a cheap day return to Kingham

A few years ago about a dozen Wednesday walkers went on a map led walk devised by David Cooke (with some additional information from Oxfordshire Country Council) essentially following the Oxfordshire way from Kingham to Charlbury. It was well received by those who came along.

I have now written up this walk, with a few tweaks, and I thought it would be good if the Wednesday Group now had  the  chance to check the detailed walk instructions. (I will be dictating any amendments as we go along so apologies in advance for that !)

This Cotswolds walk mostly (but not exclusively) follows the Oxfordshire Way from Kingham to Charlbury and never strays far from the river Evenlode passing through a dreamy countryside of gentle rolling hills, woods and fields that were the inspiration for Tolkien’s  Hobbitshire. It goes through  two attractive Cotswolds villages, Shipton under Wychwood and Ascott under Wychwood which have many beautiful stone cottages in the traditional Cotswold’s style.

In Shipton your recommended lunch-time pub which is just 6.4km (4m) into the walk is  the Wychwood Inn (01993 831185) – 400m there and back off the main route. We should get there about 13.30. However on the map-led walk a few people went on to lunch at the Lamb Inn (01993 830465) and I recall their comments were favourable.  This option adds about 1.4km to the walk.

A later and recommended pub lunch option 8.8km into the walk is the Swan  (01993 832332) at Ascott under Wychwood

Charlbury has three pubs, literally a stone’s throw from each other. The Rose and Crown is very good for craft beers but only does basic bar food. The two alternatives will be better for food.

Given the journey times this will be a long, but hopefully rewarding day out. A pdf file with further details and full walk instructions is available in  the new walks section and you can access it here

T=3.246

5 comments:

tartanrug said...

Great walk. The food at the Lamb was pretty awful and is way too far off the route to make it worthy of even a mention. The Swan is open until 2.30 and is the foodie choice.

PeteB said...

I defer to tartanrug's culineray expertise. At a reasonable pace we should reach the Swan at about 2pm. It is also directly on our route. The Wychwood Inn is not bad but rather spoilt in my view by an ill-advised interior design make-over which does not fit with a Cotswolds Inn.

Anonymous said...

Walk sounds good. Hope to atttend. jfk

Anonymous said...

Seven n=7 on this walk on a sunny and warm w=sunny_and_warm day. Classic Cotswold countryside and buildings with a great lunch at the Swan, Ascott under Wychwood. A pleasant afternoon too, through fields of grass, canola and wheat and on to Charlbury where The Bell provided Wine, excellent coffee and mugs of tea before we set off back to Paddington.

PeteB said...

To the Magnificent 7: many thanks for your comments and suggestions. I have amended the walk directions and sent the pdf to Andrew and Sean for the walk to be numbered and added to our library. I think overall this makes a really attractive summer outing.