What had always worried me about country living, apart from true-blue neighbours, was how we’d get about by bike.

We couldn’t stand being car-dependent – any new home needed to be accessible to a town or a city by bike.

Charlbury proved perfect: only 17 minutes by train to Oxford, it’s quiet, friendly, and a veritable warren of hilly bridleways for yours truly.

Plus, it’s not overrun with Range Rovers (unlike the Chilterns).

Our house is on an unadopted lane (ie, not owned by, and never fixed by, the council). The lane peters out into a bridleway just past our home, leading up into the hills towards Chippy. Perfect for mountain biking.

Charlbury has direct trains into Paddington, so last week I exchanged my rural idyll for the hustle, bustle, diesel and din of the capital.

I unfolded my trusty Brompton and whizzed down the steep hill to board the 16.10 to London.

I don’t own a GPS, and Google maps on my phone wanted to send me along Euston Road to Victoria Park, near the Olympic site in east London. So I produced two A3 print outs of a route from the rather brilliant website ‘cycle.travel’.

London cycling felt markedly improved since two years prior. Perhaps this is partly down to not getting lost.

I have a decent sense of direction, yet am incapable of holding a straight line in London. One gyratory and two short cuts later, and I’m totally disorientated.

I rode to Islington on the east-west route a few blocks south of Oxford Street.

It really needs to be signed better – it would have been impossible to follow without a map. Just after Gower Street, there’s a wonderful shared-space plaza that works well.

Then, for a couple of blocks along Tavistock Place, there’s a very narrow segregated two-way path. It’s unnerving as oncoming bikes fly past inches apart. This stretch needs altering, it’s way too stingy for the numbers using it.

Not long after, there’s a section that never fails to catch me out.

The paths do an ‘X’, with the protected cycle lanes actually crossing sides and riders playing chicken as they approach the crossing point. I bet it’s carnage after the pubs chuck out.

The motorcycles were a nuisance. Hundreds of 1000cc+ superbikes roared past too fast and too close, seemingly bent on making cyclists’ lives a misery. Then from Islington to Victoria Park I rode along Regent’s Canal towpath.

On that sunny afternoon, the cyclists were a nuisance for the legion walkers and parents with pushchairs, passing with no warning too quickly and too near. Surely, every day a few riders must fall in off the narrow towpath.

I did feel slightly naked without a helmet. I’ve kind of lost the habit in sleepy Charlbury.

In Oxford I rarely bothered with a helmet for pottering about town. But back in the big city, my bare head stuck out.

I retraced my route the following day. It’s just 40 minutes from Victoria Park to Paddington once you know the way.

I arrived back in West Oxfordshire sun-kissed and relieved to live somewhere that doesn’t make my snot turn black from air pollution.