Epping Forest bike ride!

This past Saturday, Rachel and I went for our long-awaited bike ride to Epping Forest (and beyond). You can see our route here:


Now I didn't take very many pictures during the ride, because we were mostly riding, but I did take a few! The first came from the slightly disappointing Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge, an English Heritage-owned property at the southern end of Epping Forest. I mean the FIRST Queen Elizabeth, by the way. The Victorians painted over the Tudor-style beams and as a result the wood started to rot, so the building has now been entirely whitewashed to prevent further decay. It was built around 1540 for Henry VIII and would have been open-walled, the better to party and hang out of whilst shooting at deer.


Further inside of the Forest, we saw several cows. We liked their horns!

The Forest itself was very impressive to see, but did not photograph well. It is covered with mountain bike trails and then wider trails for walking and horseback riding. Rachel's bike is a road bike so we stuck to the wider trails. In the forest, the trees were so thick that I could easily imagine Robin Hood hiding in there...

There was also a hidden church and cemetery in the northern part of the Forest. It was decorated beautifully for a wedding that would take place later that afternoon.

After leaving that church, we rode our bikes towards what we thought would be a deer park. However, we wound up going down a very long, very steep hill, and emerging out of the trees and into open farmland. Afterwards, we decided that we really did not want to go back up that hill, so we stayed on the road and followed it to the town of Waltham, Essex. This involved going outside the M25, London's ring road -- we were really in the country now! Almost to "London" Stansted Airport! Waltham had a large church, where another wedding was taking place.


It started to rain quite hard as we were in Waltham, so we sheltered under some trees by a mill stream with several ducks, swans and cygnets, and hens. We were in the grounds of the ruined Waltham Abbey, next to the largest remaining portion of it -- a 14th century gatehouse.

Here's a view to the church from the Mill Stream (having just walked through the gatehouse).

On our ride back into London, the sky started to clear. We rode most of the distance alongside the Lee River, which is lined with canal boats. It's a very beautiful, peaceful place.

We rode back through Hackney Marshes and over to see the Olympic building site. I have to say, I was very impressed by everything I saw there, and I'm looking forward to what London will do in 2012...


Following that we made it back to Dalston, against Razorlight's best advice, and staggered into the Morrisons to buy some food. Rachel made me a delicious dinner of bbq burgers and sweet potato fries, we watched some terrible British TV, and then I made my way back from Finsbury Park to Paddington across central London on a Saturday night (probably the most exciting cycling I did all weekend!). All in all, it was a fantastic adventure!

A cycle trip to the east.

The villages to the east of Oxford have been unexplored territory for me, with the exception of a single foray down the A40 to Forest Hill, so last weekend, E and I went out for a cycle ride that encompassed several picturesque, thatched-roof cottage, village churchyard type places.

Here's the route, it was about 20 miles:

Our first stop was the church of St Thomas of Canterbury, Elsfield. I'm not entirely clear on what the connection to St Thomas was but they had some fine artwork of him on the inside of the church. Unlike many churches in Oxfordshire (and throughout England) this one seemed to have quite a bit of money, and they had just completed adding a hall onto the church. The church building itself was quite small, and, as you can see, did not have a bell tower:

Inside, there were the usual monuments and a few interesting tombs. This one struck me in particular.

Looking back towards the renovations -- I thought that the gallery walk was a nice touch.

And leaving the church and stepping out into the sunny churchyard...

From there we carried on along country roads towards the next villages. Riding a cycle on English country roads can be exciting, because the speed limit is essentially "do whatever you like" but luckily English drivers seem to be very attentive (in general) and are often very nice about how the pass cyclists -- unless they are on motorcycles, at which point all bets are off. This concern is especially good for me, because my back wheel is in bad shape and it is difficult for me to go up hills at any speed.

Don't be deceived by how flat the landscape is; Oxfordshire is composed of rolling hills. Here's a wheat field; this picture is very indicative of the countryside in general. The view is probably quite similar to what it would have been a thousand years ago.

The next stop on our tour took in a larger country church, this one that had some connection with John Buchan, as several plaques around the place attested.

This is my new style for artistic picture taking :).

One of the coolest things inside this church was this stained glass window:

There was also this confusing stairway that seemed to lead nowhere -- once it went around the corner, there were stones across it's original path, but it was nowhere near any galleries or the bell tower. Our only guess was that the pulpit was originally much higher and it led to that.

Fire safety is important, especially in stone buildings!

Following this, it was a long cycle ride through Forest Hill (which involved a hill, natch), then on across the A40 (road to London) and to Wheatley. On the way we passed Waterperry, which sounds like another good trip for an afternoon -- I think I'll check that out some weekend soon. From Wheatley, we ascended Shotover Hill, aiming to take the original route into Oxford from the east.

Shotover Hill apparently means "steep hill" in Old English, per wikipedia. It certainly was a steep hill -- hard to believe that it was the best route into Oxford for many years. It was made into a turnpike -- an official road -- in 1719. It was originally forested, part of the Wychwood Royal Forest from at least the time of Domesday until the 1660s, but was badly deforested by the time of the turnpike. Not too long after becoming a turnpike, highway robbery along it became a serious problem, and it was replaced by what would become the A40 not too long after. I'm not sure why this major road originally went over such a big hill instead of skirting it.

Either way, the hill was definitely steep, and due to my wheel problem, I was walking my bike up much of it. About 3/4 of the way up, I got a phone call from 13,000 ft in Colorado, which was pretty awesome.

This is what the top looks like today:

And from the top there is also a view of Oxford:

Unfortunately this view is much less pleasant than the classic "dreaming spires" view that one gets from Boars Hill or Rose Hill. Ah well. The best part of the cycle ride is the long downhill from here -- it is downhill to Headington, and then of course (for those who know Oxford), a long downhill from Headington to the city centre itself which is in the valleys created by the Cherwell and Isis. Ice creams halfway down seemed the perfect way to end the day.