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We arrived at The Red Lion in Old Marston at around 6pm on a very cold evening in December.  I had read on a Facebook group that they welcomed motorhome stopovers so we thought we would give it a try.  I phoned a few days before we went to check this was still the case and the landlady was really nice and welcoming.  We put the address into our trusty Tom Tom Camper, who promptly told us that there was no suitable route for our size vehicle!  As usual I chose to ignore this and see what happened when we got close.  As it turned out I have no idea what Tot Tom thought we were driving as the roads were fine.  Note to self, check what dimension I have in the sat nav!

The car park was nice and level with plenty of room for us and very quiet over night.  There was one other van there who were staying for two nights.  We tucked Wike up with the new Silver Screen over the windows and headed into the pub for dinner.  The food was home cooked and really tasty and the atmosphere in the pub was nice, we were made to feel really welcome.

The following morning I was talking to the landlady and mentioned that we were going to find somewhere to park the van and spend the day in Oxford as neither of us had been before.  She said we were more than welcome to leave Wike in their car park, so we did.  Off came the bikes and off we set on the short cycle into the City.

First stop was The Natural History Museum  which holds an internationally-significant collection of natural history specimens and archives in a stunning example of neo-Gothic architecture.  A quick Pizza for lunch in a very nice Italian restaurant then off to the indoor market for a browse round the stalls.  Although it was more a collection of small shops.  Our next stop on our ‘day of culture’ was a visit to the Ashmolean Museum, their world famous collections range from Egyptian mummies to contemporary art, telling human stories across cultures and across time.  This is well worth a visit if you are ever in Oxford.  I could have spent hours looking round but as they closed at 5pm we had to leave.  We cycled back to the pub, packed up Wike and headed to our next night’s pub stopover.

Foe this night I had booked us into The Trout Inn at Wolvercote, Oxford.  The journey was only 4 mile but the last half mile was through a small village and a road with single track bridges that you couldn’t see over.  Due to the angle of the car park entrance, we had to go in in the exit, but what a great car park it was.  Ver large and right by the river.  You could hear a bit of road noise during the night but not enough to disturb our sleep.  The pub is a premium pub, bar and restaurant with a great garden right next to the river.  The food was superb, a expensive but we did go for the Christmas menu of Prosecco, venison, chocolate bomb for desert and a very nice bottle of wine.  

Two very different pub, however, I would recommend both for different reasons.