Charlbury

Every Wold & Wheel day starts and finishes in Charlbury, a small town on the edge of the ancient Wychwood Forest with a direct rail line from London Paddington - which makes us remarkably easy to reach without a car of your own.

It is a proper working Cotswold town rather than a museum piece: honey-stone houses, an old market street, independent shops and pubs, and the Evenlode valley on the doorstep. It makes a gentle, unhurried start to the day before the lanes open up into the wider wolds.

Charlbury has been here a very long time. It grew from a clearing in the royal hunting forest of Wychwood, and by Saxon times it already had a minster church where St Mary’s stands today. Henry III granted the town a market charter in 1256, and for centuries afterwards it earned its living first from wool and then from glove-making, the leather cut from deer out of the forest, a trade that kept much of the town in work well into the 1800s.

A few things worth slowing down for as we pass through:

• St Mary’s Church, a former minster with Saxon roots and centuries of rebuilding since, open most days.
• The Quaker Meeting House on Market Street, built in 1681 and among the oldest still in use anywhere in the country.
• Charlbury Museum by the Corner House, run by volunteers, telling the town’s story from the Stone Age onwards.
• Cornbury Park on the western edge, a former royal hunting estate and now the home of the Wilderness Festival each summer.
• The timber railway station on the Cotswold Line, opened in 1853 and little changed since.

We don’t always end the day back in town, so it is entirely up to you. If you fancy a cold pint or a non-alcoholic drink to round things off, we can swing back by The Bull and raise a glass - a good spot to settle everyone’s count of the Rollright Stones.