Places to explore near Oxford

Surviving 12th-century tower of St Martin's church at Oxford's central crossroads, climbable for rooftop city views.

0 km SW

Norman castle and old county gaol, with a climbable Saxon tower.

0.3 km W

The non-tidal Thames — 45 locks of managed river between Cricklade's meadows and the tideway at Teddington.

0.4 km W · spans 7 counties

The river from its Cotswold trickle to the Thames Barrier — the gentlest long walk in Britain.

0.6 km S · spans 7 counties

Oxford's grandest college, with Tom Tower and its own cathedral.

0.7 km SE

Britain's oldest botanic garden, a walled physic garden of 1621 by the Cherwell.

0.7 km E

Honey-coloured limestone villages scattered across rolling sheep country, and paths enough to link them all up

11.3 km NW

Raymond Blanc's manor-house destination set in Oxfordshire gardens, among the very top-rated dining rooms in rural Britain.

12.1 km E

Large Oxfordshire farm centre with an award-winning butchery, pick-your-own and cafe.

12.4 km SW

Rolling chalk downland above the Vale of the White Horse, threaded by one of Britain's oldest roads

12.5 km S

Baroque palace, Churchill's birthplace, Capability Brown park.

12.5 km NW

Handsome stone town at the gates of Blenheim Palace, with a Georgian high street and the county museum.

12.5 km NW · Oxfordshire

Small former Saxon cathedral village near the Thames, its long street of old cottages and inns gathered round Dorchester Abbey.

13.6 km SE · Oxfordshire

Moated 14th-century stone gatehouse, all that remains of a fortified manor at Boarstall, kept by the National Trust.

13.7 km NE

Former Norman abbey church on a Saxon cathedral site, famous for its sculpted 14th-century Jesse window in the chancel.

13.7 km SE

Twin beech-crowned chalk hills above the Thames, Round Hill and the Iron Age hillfort of Castle Hill, with wide views.

14.8 km S

A Cotswold village dining pub, national Dining Pub of the Year for 2019.

16 km W

Hilltop village pub with rooms and its own farm supplying the kitchen and butchery.

16.1 km NE

Hilltop village on a spur above the Vale of Aylesbury, ringed by common land with a working post mill and wide views over three counties.

16.8 km NE · Buckinghamshire

Long thatch-and-timber village near Thame with a 15th-century courthouse and a high street of ironstone cottages once known for needle-making.

18.1 km E · Buckinghamshire

Beech woods and chalk downland within easy reach of London, laced with old ridge paths and grazing red kites

18.8 km SE

Chiltern-foot village with a spring-fed brook, watercress beds and a rare surviving group of medieval church, school and brick almshouses.

19.6 km SE · Oxfordshire

Windrush-side village of thatched cottages beside the riverside ruins of Minster Lovell Hall and its dovecote.

19.6 km W · Oxfordshire

16th-century Cotswolds inn with rooms run by the London Pelican team, unfussy flavour-led cooking.

20.4 km NW

A 100-foot brick-and-stone tower in a hilltop wood, England's last great folly, built for Lord Berners in 1935.

23.9 km SW

Quiet Windrush hamlet of warm Cotswold stone, its church holding the tiered Fettiplace monuments and the Mitford sisters' graves in the yard.

23.9 km W · Oxfordshire

Rothschild French Renaissance chateau and gardens.

24.2 km NE

A contour-hugging early canal wandering from Coventry's doorstep through empty Midlands countryside to the Thames at Oxford.

0.5 km NW · spans 4 counties

College gardens inside Oxford's medieval city wall, with a raised viewing mound.

0.6 km E

Arne Jacobsen's modernist landscape of the 1960s, composed as carefully as the college itself.

1 km NE

Small stone conduit house of the early 1600s on the slopes above North Hinksey, built to pipe spring water into Oxford's Carfax Conduit.

2.1 km SW

Old stone inn beside a weir on the Thames at Wolvercote, with a riverside terrace below Godstow's abbey ruins.

4.2 km NW

A country park in Oxfordshire.

4.3 km E

Across Oxfordshire from Bourton-on-the-Water to Henley-on-Thames, joining the Cotswolds to the Chilterns by field path and village.

6.9 km NE · Oxfordshire & Gloucestershire