North London to Oxford – decent bike route

May ride to my Dad’s place next weekend. Anyone have a decent route recommendation – mixture of quite direct but on nice roads ideally – that they wouldn’t mind sharing? Just on Google maps or a GPX etc. if possible?

Cheers.

YGM.

Depends how far North you are. The route I sent follows quiet roads below the A40 if you’re quite far North of London you might want to stay above the A40. Something along the lines of Hemel, Berkhamsted, Wendover, Princes Risborough, Thame, Wheatley, Oxford.

Brilliant – much appreciated. I’ll take a look shortly. Only up near Archway, but may well divert the way you mention. I’ll have to investigate.

I’ve ridden http://goo.gl/hxqTO from Oxford to London a few times. The bit between Uxbridge and central London isn’t that great, but the rest of the route might give you some ideas.

sas, that’s very close to the same route that i sent the only differences being a little detour from cookham over winter hill and a another quieter way out of Marlow other than that more or less the same route.

Excellent, thanks.

I did a route that goes under the A40 from out west somewhere a few years back. was a nice route with only one significant lump in it. was about 65 miles I think.

isn’t there a canal route? that could be quite nice.

Any more route options would be much appreciated if either of you have any more info. Reckon I’m definitely doing it one way or another so need to get something planned.

You could take a look at sustrans route 57. It stays above the A40 passing through Princes Risborough and Thame. Not sure of the surface for the whole route though, some of the sustrans routes can be mixed surfaces and not entirely appropriate for a road bike.

Cheers, I’ll have a look. Looks like it may start a little too north, though?

One last thing – how on earth do people navigate things like this on the go?!

I did a 40ish miler by having a little cue card printed out and zip-tied to the top tube, but looking at the GPX I kindly got emailed above, it’s got probably 100 navigation points so not really feasible to print out.

I want to do this ride, but am being slightly dissuaded by the thought of having to stop at every junction to map read!

One last thing – how on earth do people navigate things like this on the go?!

Not exactly a cheap option for a one off but GPS of some sort on the bars is what i use. Alternatively if you go in about a fortnight then a very similar route to the one I sent you (and sas posted) will be signposted.

Bit cheeky but as you were pre planning it would seem more of a happy coincidence.

I did this route from East Finchley to Oxford(and back)it was a great route and some nice climbs of the way back too.

http://app.strava.com/activities/28265327

Cheers guys, more good info. I like your thinking mW – may well postpone it until then!

will, thanks for the route, will take a look.

As for nav, am wondering about a bar-mounted GPS-routing android option, as i can’t afford a Garmin 800 or similar at the moment, much as I’d like one!

Nav wise, fortunately I was riding with a chap who had a Garmin 800. Without it I would have taken a few Google Map pages printed off, and no doubt have gotten very lost indeed!

Good thinking – I might attempt to befriend one of those pre-Saturday!

Ok, I’ve got Osmand on my phone and am going to just blindly follow it wherever it takes me!

Seems to say 62 miles from my house, so early signs are that at least it’s going to take me to the right place… 😯

And Will, good effort – impressive ride that!

Just noticed that you’re going this Saturday. A couple of things I mean to mention if you are doing that route I sent you:

Be sure to take the Right turn at the roundabout after Cookham (SU 89096 85254) up a road named Terry’s Lane the route straight on is marginally shorter and doesn’t go quite as high but the Terry’s Lane detour is one of the best parts of the whole route.

Also beware of the hairpin corner coming down off Winter Hill (SU 86033 85481), it’s often gravelly and taken at speed is very easy to mess up in dramatic style. If your not familiar with it don’t give it full beans into the corner.

You can copy and paste the grid references into here for a better look at where I’m talking about.

Thanks very much, mate. I have this app on my phone – Osmand[/url] – and have bought a bar-mounted waterproof case so am going to employ a bit of blind faith and see how we get on.

I’m not quite sure the route it’s going to take me, but thanks for the info anyway – I don’t reckon I’ll be flying along, as will be having to keep an eye on the little blue line of destiny that hopefully will lead me to the right place!

By the way, I’ll be putting up a full review of the bar mount and Osmand – for £30 for the mount and the app for free, if it works it’s going to be my bargain alternative to a Garmin navigation device!