Ewelme, St Mary

Today I reached St Mary at Ewelme, the last of the twelve notable churches that I have been trying to reach this year by bike. The church and its setting are lovely. It also contains a number of interesting carvings, the tomb of Geoffrey Chaucer's son, and this magnificant font cover.

As the crow flies, Ewelme is fifteen miles away, but the round trip was 60 miles, and involved a fair amount of climbing. Going out, I went up through Hambleden, and Turville, then over Christmas Common, to Watlington, before coming down to Ewelme. Coming back I followed national cycle route 5 to Reading, then route 4 to Maidenhead (more or less).

The weather was almost perfect: sunny but cool, though the wind was fairly strong at times. Apart from setting a new record distance for myself, this is the second time that I have ridden more than my age in miles, and my Eddington number has moved up a notch. My average speed wasn't much better than normal, though given the distance and the amount of climbing I'm fairly relaxed about that. This wasn't the right outing to try going more quickly.