I am too old for this sort of thing. It’s mid-afternoon on Monday by the time the dust, beer and loud guitar riffs of Truck subside, and my editor wants this column.

Truck Festival is Oxford’s mini-Glastonbury – but with soul. I’ve been meaning to get along for years. Last year I cycled out to Truck’s sister festival, Wood, which is held in Braziers Park every May. This time I felt ready for the real thing: Truck, in Steventon, is a short ride from Oxford, and the guaranteed late nights with flinty fields for a mattress could put me off no longer.

And so Friday came. The sun shone while white clouds eddied far in the distance. I’d taken the afternoon off and spent an hour preparing for the ride in an ebullient mood. Miffed that I couldn’t find my Lycra shorts and wicking vest, I mustered all the tools I could carry and slipped them into a Camelbak with a ‘bladder’ full of water. A rucksack was mainly filled with a small tent, with room for hat, torch and sunscreen.

I arrived at Oxford Cycle Workshop’s new base in Glanville Road riding a flash carbon-fibre racing bike with clipless pedals. Instantly I felt like the jerk who’d turned up at a genteel cocktail party in outlandish fancy dress.

I was glad about that missing Lycra. Everyone waiting for the ride was, well... normal, with regular city bikes, open-toed shoes and panniers full of camping gear. One couple was even towing a trailer with a toddler in it.

We threw tents and rucksacks onto the back of OCW’s flat-bed truck, which was transporting our possessions.

I feared a plodding pootle, but in fact the ride was awesome. Nearly 40, old and very young, single speed and Tour de France-ready, set off along National Cycle Route 5 via Abingdon and beyond, to Steventon. There were a few stretches of fast-traffic roads, but mostly we followed cycle tracks and shady lanes.

The English countryside at this time of the year is jaw-droppingly beautiful. The nearer we got to Truck, the more picture-postcard perfect the landscape. The half-hour ride took us one-and-a-half thanks to a puncture and a broken spoke, and was all the better for this extension.

We arrived at Truck and pitched tents an hour before dark clouds eclipsed the summer sky. The organisers are serious about getting festival-goers to avoid cars, and most gallantly award anyone who cycles to the festival a free pint. That Truck Bitter was the best I’ve had all year.

Truck was a pleasant surprise. Quieter than I’d expected, it’s the sort of place where, every half-an-hour, you bump into friends who you didn’t know were going. The site was compact enough to make cycling around it unnecessary, and probably ill-advised after a healthy ration of Truck Bitter. There’s no corporate branding, so food was served by volunteers from the Rotary Club of Didcot, with profits going to charity. Other stallholders were locals, like the G&D ice cream tricycle.

As someone who last camped at a festival (Glastonbury) more than 20 years ago, I’d expected to feel conspicuously advanced in years. In fact, the quantity of grey beards made me look young by comparison with the otherwise ubiquitous teens with falling-down drainpipe jeans and floppy haircuts. I was also struck by the number of people with babies and toddlers.

On the way home, I reflected on the bands – those that should have shone but which bombed, and the unexpected thrill of hearing Graham Coxon and his wall of fuzzy guitar riffs.

But perhaps most unexpected of all was this short bike trip from Oxford that became a pleasurable end in itself.