Ride Around Oxfordshire (conclusion)
August 16, 1998
From Swerford, I followed a short detour towards Great Tew. This secluded village was pretty enough, with thatched cottages and boxwood hedges, but quiet it was not—scrubbed, pretty looking people with impeccable smiles and "city folks" stamped on their foreheads were crammed into, and spilling out of, Great Tew’s village center, especially its 17th century pub. Considering that the center was only 1 block long, it was downright congested. With all the commotion and the practiced laughter, I wasn’t sure if I was in the countryside or in the middle of a Dockers commercial. I hurried out of Great Tew and, to my relief, found myself back on quiet lanes in the Cherwell Valley. I rode through Sandford St. Martin, Kiddington, Glympton, and Wootton, and approached Woodstock from a lane to the northeast. The headwind on this short stretch was particularly noticeable—and annoying. In fact, this flat, windy stretch reminded me of the last 30 miles of the Davis Double Century around the farms near the Sacramento delta, which I usually hit late in the afternoon, when the wind is at its strongest. Hills I don’t mind, but headwinds?
(Below: One of the many
pretty stone-and-thatch houses in Great Tew)
(Above and Below: Just past Ledwell on the way to Woodstock)
Woodstock (not of the hippie music festival fame, silly!) is a historically important town, but it’s probably most famous for Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill. As I understand it, Queen Anne gave John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, the Manor of Woodstock in 1704 and had the palace built for him in gratitude for the duke’s military success against the armies of Louis XIV. For a non-royal residence, the place is so huge, it’s obscene. Frankly, I don’t know how Winston Churchill and his ancestors could have lived in such a grossly huge palace without feeling guilty for having so much when many others have so little. But royal favor seems to be typical of how England ended up with such uneven distributions of wealth. Not Winston’s finest hour, in my opinion.
(Below: All of Blenheim
Palace that would fit on my camera lens)
From Blenheim, I followed the A44 on a flat 6-mile run back to Oxford, past another series of bewildering roundabouts (I’ve finally figured out after a few months of riding in England that the key to successfully negotiating busy English roundabouts in a bicycle is not to blink and act as if one doesn’t care if one lives or dies—this cavalier attitude towards survival seems to shock motorists that they give way). I had a few minutes to kill before the train leaves for Paddington, so I decided to have a quick look around Oxford and its interesting Gothic buildings. Even such an esteemed institution as Oxford makes mistakes—in 1810, it expelled a young student named Percy Bysshe Shelley for writing a pamphlet "The Necessity of Atheism" (gasp! horrors!)—and then, perhaps to show it’s not too proud to admit its mistakes, Oxford later put up a marble memorial to honor the same Shelley, after the Romantic poet gained reputation as one of English literature’s most original and creative forces.
(Below: Martyr's Memorial
in Oxford. The memorial commemorates
3 Protestant martyrs burned at the stake for heresy)
(Below: Radcliffe Camera,
Oxford's most distinctive building.
It now serves as a reading room of Oxford's Bodleian Library)
Shelley was an interesting chap. Born in 1792 to a very wealthy family, he was a rabble-rouser who got in trouble at Eton and Oxford for his radical views. He abandoned his pregnant fiance and a daughter to elope with another woman. He left England in 1818, went into exile in Italy, and never returned to England (he drowned at age 30). Because of Shelley’s radical political, sexual and atheistic views, his literary output was, for a long time, ignored as worthless. It is characters like Shelley and Byron that give English powers-that-be fits. Shelley, like Byron and Keats, had to wait until the mid 20th-century before gaining their rightful places alongside Chaucer and Shakespeare at Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner. But of course, none of this had to do with the ride I just finished. (Back)