Ride report

A group of 9 set off from the Elsfield turn off the ring road on Saturday on a mission to get to Charlbury in time to see the Women’s Tour of Britain go by on their way from the start in Chipping Norton to the finish in St Giles in Oxford. It was a beautiful day, if a bit windy, and we made good enough time to stop in Charlbury and buy provisions and have a takeaway coffee before cycling on through the town and past the railway station and plonking ourselves on the verge halfway up Forest Hill waiting for the Tour to come by. The build up was interesting – we should have started counting the number of police motorbikes that came through before the actual race – I think it must have been over 20. Then from our vantage point, we could see the riders coming. As it was on a hill, they were tightly bunched but still seemed to speed by. They were followed by all the team cars and we tried to work out the value of all the bikes on the cars, let alone on the road – too many noughts to put here.

Then our mission was reversed and we had to get back to Oxford before the Tour. We had a slight advantage as we were going direct via Fawler, Eynsham and the A40 while they were going through Burford, Faringdon, Wantage, Wallingford, Didcot and Abingdon! So we made it in plenty of time and managed to find a spot at the finish that also had the big screen available to watch. It was great to see them riding on our local roads and trying to pick out exactly where they were.