Start: We begin our walk from the Red Lion Inn which is situated in Red Lion Street, close to the Oxford Canal. Cropredy OX17 1PB. Grid Ref: SP469 467
(S/E) With your back to the Red Lion Inn, go left and over the canal bridge and keep ahead on the lane to pass through a large wooden gate keeping the stream right. Continue past Prescote Manor House on your left, staying on the surfaced drive for about ¾ mile.
(1) When you reach a crossroads of paths by a wood, turn right down bridleway (no waymark), immediately crossing over the stream and stay ahead on a wide path through woodland. Continue into fields along cinder track bearing left then keeping the hedge left for some while. Go gently uphill and then through a large metal gate, staying ahead with a hedge left to eventually exit the field to the main road via another large metal gate.
(2) Turn right, taking care along the busy main road into Wardington (it may be best to cross road). Take the lane on the left signed Edgcote by the Hare and Hounds Inn heading gently downhill. Stay on the quiet country lane for approx 3/4 mile passing Wardington Gate Farm and past a group of quaint cottages.
(3) Where the road swings right continue ahead down the cul-de-sac passing a posting box set in brick structure left, heading towards the church. Just past the church you will have a fine view of Edgcote House on your right. Go past the house and take the track left (you are now on The Jurassic Way) to pass through the green metal kissing gate.
Continue down the track between beech hedges passing through gateway and continue gently downhill. Cross the bridge over River Cherwell and as you enter a spinney of cherry trees and start uphill, note a plaque mounted on a concrete plinth on your right which marks the site where a Wellington bomber crashed in 1945.
(4) Stay on the surfaced track gently uphill and through woodland then exit through the metal gate next to the lodge (dated 1846) on the left. Here you will see an information board, which is of interest. Stay ahead to enter Chipping Warden, passing the ancient church of St Peter and St Paul, to reach the main road. Here you join the Millennium Way. The Griffin Pub is just out of sight off to your right, but turn left to pass the Rose & Crown Pub and take the first road right, Appletree Road.
(5) Follow Appletree Road round the left hand bend, across the village by-pass road and where the road swings right, take stile onto the footpath on the left side of the road. Follow the footpath signs making your way left along the alleyway past buildings to take stile into a field.
Continue with the fence left to take further stile into spinney. Go through spinney into the field and then keep ahead across the centre of a large field aiming for lone tree/house roof top to find and take a fence stile behind a large oak tree.
(6) Go diagonally left to pass a clump of trees and a small mid-field dew pond on your left to skirt a large banked pond. Curve right to find a gate in the left corner of the field near a large oak tree. Take a gate with a fence right to take a mid-fence stile and then ahead to take two further stiles in the hedge, into the field. Continue with the hedge right to find and take stile to the left of the gate to a road. This section has a number of temporary fences, some electrified, which you can unhook to pass through.
(7) Cross the road to take the stile opposite, a few paces to the right. You may have to go under the wire. Then ahead to pass cattle sheds and field edge on left, to reach a waypost by mid hedge gated gap directly ahead. Go through the gap and under or over another wire into the next field and go with hedge right.
After approx 100 paces, at the field corner by the copse, turn right through the gap, then after 20 paces turn left and go with the copse left downhill (with wonderful views ahead) to go through a wide gap. Then head straight across the field to a small gap in the middle of the far hedge, just to the right of a large oak and left of a small oak, to find a bridge over a stream.
(8) Cross the stream and go diagonally left across the corner of the field to reach the left field edge. Then go uphill with the hedge left. Watch for the gap with the wooden post left, approx ¾ way up the field. Here you leave The Millennium Way. Ignore the gap and continue on the same line in the same field keeping the hedge to left, to go through a gap in the hedge in the top left corner of the field.
Follow the left edge of the next two fields for approx 250 yards downhill to find a footbridge on left through a small hedge gap just before the corner. Cross the footbridge and go diagonally half right to reach a stile in the top corner of a large field.
(9) Take the stile and go immediately left to reach the Oxford canal towpath. Go left on towpath for 2 miles to reach bridge 152.
(10) Just before bridge number 152 exit left from the towpath to go right over the bridge which brings you back to your starting point at the Red Lion Inn. (S/E)
