| 1. Starting at Ivinghoe Beacon and following the well trodden path over the hills towards Tring and coming out at the A41 bypass, cross this at the bridge, and enter the Upper Icknield Way, this section is not made for bicycles, with kissing gates every miles or so, making it a struggle to carry the bikes. After traveling approx 15 miles in the first day we arrived at our B&B in Wendover. Next day we travelled over Combe Hill and down past the Prime Ministers mansion, through a series of uphill fields, past the quite impressive Pulpit Hill (I camped here when i walked this route) down a large set of steps to the main road and up to the Plough pub, which is rarely open, but a good stop before what is coming. Cardiac Hill as we named it is straight after the pub, taking you up on top of the hills, then flattening out to Princess Risborough where we stopped for a water fill up. Heading towards Wallingford, this was a hard section with the path quite hard to follow, we went a bit wrong a couple of times, but found a lovely 11th century church (nice surprise) it was summer when we did this so the Rapeseed was about 5ft high at this point, and wet so when we had to cycle along the path through a field of rape we got soaked, but we made it to the main road heading down to Wallingford, we stayed in a B&B at the far end of town. Next morning we followed the Thames down to Goring and Streatley, lovely place, but no time to stop, we carried on over the Thames on the road, before rejoining the ridgeway about 3 miles down the road, now on to Wantage, this section is particularly hard, very rutted, and very hilly, flattening out towards Wantage, my friends bike frame got snapped in half on this section, but walked it to Wantage and got it welded, and managed to carry on. We stayed in the Crown hotel/B&B in Wantage. The next day we had to travel back up the hill to the Ridgeway path... |