The charming village of Cumnor sits just a few miles southwest of Oxford. An easy bus ride of 20 minutes, but a more complicated bike ride as it sits atop Cumnor Hill, a two-mile stretch of incline that slows many cyclists to a crawl. It’s too busy for me to navigate happily, even on my electric bike, so I follow a path along side streets with little traffic and gentler hills and it takes about 25 minutes to get home, not at all bad.

The village has two pubs, the popular Bear and Ragged Staff and the less “gastro” The Vine. There’s also a Post Office store which not only handles mail but also sells fresh produce and general store items. There’s a few churches, a few meeting places, but basically it’s two pubs and a small store.

Cumnor is brimming with lovely homes. Many thatch-roofed cottages, brick farmhouses and a few more stately houses. It’s late May now, and the unusually warm April has meant that everything seems to be in bloom a few weeks earlier than usual, the roses are bursting with colour and amazing scent everywhere. There are more modern neighbourhoods, like the one where we live, but they’re still less than a 5 minute walk to the village centre. Huge open fields surround the village in almost every direction, it’s easy to find paths that can go on for miles through open fields. I often walk Nell, our Pembroke Welsh Corgi along some of her favourite routes.