Wednesday, August 16th
I don't know what it is with those campings, but the tent fields are usually the most distant from the toilets. And then the ladies at the wrong side as well. Al those huts on wheels which have place for a bucket or chemical toilet, are the nearest, while the minimalist without anything that can serve as an emergency toilet have to walk the furthest. In those cases I'm very happy with some bushes behind our little tent. As has this campsite, but here the bushes were nettles. And that's not something you want to be tickled by in the middle of the night. Or just never, period. Well... Let's just say I've been punished for choosing the bushes instead of the toilets. That's all I want to say about it...
We're currently on a camping in Oxford. Here we'll stay an extra night. The passed days were vey diverse. As much with the weather as with the route.Saturday we have cycled a 100 kilometers from Cardiff to Bristol. The route was boring, but because the route was descending for the most part at the beginning, we made good speeds and we were in Bristol halfway through the afternoon.
Sunday the weather was sunny and the route completely different.Between Bristol and Bath is a wonderful bicycle path, the Bristol and Bath Railway Path. This path consists of a level bicycle path of 21 kilometers long which is laid between 1979 and 1986 over the old Midland Railway. It was the first path for bicycles and pedestrians made possible by the British organization for cyclists, Sustrans. Along the route are old parts of trains and railway stations. Some of those stations are pubs now, where cyclists can get refreshments. According to Remy the drawback of such a nice route is the amount of distraction, so you can't make good distances, but to me the route is just perfect. Even after Bath (wonderful town!) there was room for speed. Up to Bradford on Avon we cycled over towpaths along the Kennet and Avon Canal and because it was Sunday and the weather was good, we had to share the path with other cyclists and a lot of pedestrians. But it was wonderful...
North of Bradford on Avon is Chippenham. In the previous week we received an email from Kit with the question: "Will you go through Chippenham? At the time I answered no, but since altered our route, we did go there, I mailed Kit later with the question what made Chippenham so special. Well, there lives Jack who is from Dutch origin and is a friend of Kit. Jack has been responsible for some local bicycle routes in the past and would love to meet us.
And so we arrived in Chippenham at Jack and his wife Jan on Sunday in the evening. There we had a very pleasurable evening and the next morning we left with a map drawn by Jack in the direction of The Cotswolds. It started raining again and at the start the route looked a bit boring to me. This changed after Cirencester where we entered The Cotswolds.
The Cotswolds is an area with many hills and no, this time they're luckily not so steep.The facade landscape (half open landscape with hedges and dry stone walls) of many small villages an towns is characteristic due to the use of honey-coloured limestone for walls and roofs. It is mainly meadows and some woods. Oxford lies there in the east and Bath in the west. We came through idyllic villages like Burton on the Water, Lower Slaughter and Stow on the Wold.Over towpaths along the Thames which has its source in The Cotswolds, we entered the old university city Oxford.
