The Lemon Fool

Next Friday I will be heading west from Essex to Gloucestershire.

I have been informed that we are going to stop for lunch. After a couple of hours we will be near where the A40 branches off the M40.

Anybody know of any lunch places from their to Oxford?

Decent all day breakfast or good burger place would be a good choice.

Thoughts?

Slarti

Slarti wrote:
Anybody know of any lunch places from their to Oxford?

Decent all day breakfast or good burger place would be a good choice.

Don't forget the Wetherspoons at the Beaconsfield services. There's a Harvester just off the Handy Cross exit (Marlow Bottom sign).

Otherwise there's Headington . That requires turning off the A40 and heading into Oxford. There's also a McD's just before the Headington roundabout.

My twisted mind thinks that lunch on the A40 anywhere would not end well. Best to find a restaurant off the road.

Dod

You might like The Trout Inn. just off the A40 on the Gloucester side of Oxford. Extra points for you if your passenger liked Morse on the telly as they often finished up there.
https://www.thetroutoxford.co.uk/

Just before you reach the A40 is the village of Great Milton. There is a lovely little nosh house there called Le Manoir Au Quat' Saisons, they should be able to throw together sausage, egg and chips for two

wilbobob wrote:You might like The Trout Inn. just off the A40 on the Gloucester side of Oxford. Extra points for you if your passenger liked Morse on the telly as they often finished up there.
https://www.thetroutoxford.co.uk/

+1

Not necessarily on your route, though viable, but an excellent greasy spoon is,

Jacks Hill Cafe
A5 Watling St, Towcester NN12 8ET

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restauran ... gland.html
https://www.transportcafe.co.uk/truck-s ... towcester/
https://www.facebook.com/jackshillcafe/

Having a look on the truck stop site may give you ideas for your preferred route.

regards, dspp

I second Wetherspoons at Beaconsfield services. If you want something more scenic, the Trout at Godstow is fine. Turn off at the Wolvercote roundabout. Alternatively head towards Kidlington and on towards Banbury. Several decent pubs around Langton Lock, including the Highwayman, the Jolly Boatman and the Boat at Thrupp, just off the A4260. You can easily get back on route through Langford Lane. (The Boat featured in several of the Morse films).

TJH

There used to be a book called something like "a mile away" that had a list of supermarkets and shopping centres within a mile of a motorway junction, mainly used for cheap fuel but also for eateries.

These days electrickery has made it obsolete, however an online version sort of still exists but looks like an old Geocities wensite!
http://www.offmotorway.com/index.htm

We have the Wetherspoons in our satnav as you can download a file that adds them as for you, but often I just zoom into the area on Google Maps and look for "restaurant or cafe"

Paul

Thanks to all for the suggestions. Even the sarcastic ones

Our target is now the Plough at Wolvercote, rather than The Trout, as Mrs S prefers the lunch time menu. Without looking at The Trout I wouldn't have found The Plough.

If traffic is bad on the M25, we may well fall back on the Weatherspoons at Beaconsfield Services.

Cheers
Slarti

Looking at the journey home, we will almost certainly be stopping at the Weatherspoons at Beaconsfield Services and because of that I have installed the Weatherspoons app.

For those who have used it, do you have to insert all of your credit card details each time you use it? I can see no way to pre-load them.

Cheers
Slarti

Slarti wrote:For those who have used it, do you have to insert all of your credit card details each time you use it? I can see no way to pre-load them.

If you use it to order food and drink, I believe so. There's also a facility to scan the bar code of your credit card. Having tried to use it, keying in the credit card details seems faster.

So to wind this up, we failed to reach the Plough at Oxford as the traffic was so bad that we wouldn't have got there before they stopped doing food.

We set off a 10:30 (after receiving the wedding cake to transport at 10:15!) and didn't even get to the M25 J28, 26 miles down the A12 until nearly an hour later. First there was the delay caused by the bus on fire https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/177984 ... 2/?ref=rss then the roadworks, well cones at the southern end of the Chelmsford bypass reducing the road to 1 lane, caused massive queues. Once we got onto the M25 all seemed well until we got to a couple of miles from J27 when we joined the first of many tailbacks. All in all we averaged not much more than 15mph right round to J17 where the satnav told us that we could save 15 minutes by getting off the motorway, which we did. So lunch at Beaconsfield Weatherspoons was at about 13:30, using the loos in the food court, because the ones in the 'Spoons were upstairs and Mrs S has problems coming down stairs - why do they mostly put their loos upstairs?

After lunch I entered our final destination, near Ross-on-Wye into the satnav and it told us it would be an hour quicker to go down to the M4 and along that to J14 for Hungerford, then off cross country to the Cirencester road at Slough and north from there, even though there was something like 17 miles of average speed cameras after we joined, with only one man working. According to others at the wedding it was much more than an hour quicker following that suggestion.

On the way back, yesterday the quickest route, by about 30 minutes, was to go M50, M5 north, M42 and M40 so off we went. Getting close to Beaconsfield the ETA at the 'Spoons stopped going down and started going up, so I let the satnav in the car guide me off at J5 and through towns that I didn't know. Much to my surprise we eventually rejoined the M40 at J2 and it was empty! This is why https://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/1 ... incidents/

All in all not my best couple of days travelling, but the wedding was a good one.

Slarti

Snorvey wrote:Travelling is so complicated in England!

That is because we have choices which are often not available in Scotland, due to those ruddy big mountains

Slarti