Oxford is like Davis CA, bikes everywhere because of all the students. But one definitely doesn't need a bike to see it.

Riding in the Cotswolds is not the easiest for sure. There are some off road bike trails which isn't apparently what you want since you aren't taking a mountain bike. Riding on the roads is difficult - not because of the terrain but because the roads are narrow w/ no shoulder nor bike lanes.

I'd leave it home and rent off road bikes where you want to have a go.

"So far, it seems the Cotswolds/Oxford would be the best place for this"

You'll almost certainly be a dangerous menace in the Cotswolds, and a bike's a pointless liability for a tourist in Oxford.

Lots of people (relatively few of them students these days) cycle round Oxford because it's flat, they work in the centre, they live a couple of miles away and it's better for them than the relatively pricey buses.

For tourists, bikes are an awful idea: practically everything's within walking distance, the few sights that aren't require fighting the extraordinary density of those buses, many of the prettiest sights require cycling over cobble stones, and securing your bike when you don't want it is a grade A pain in the rear. Bits still get nicked.

The Cotswolds are designed for walkers, buses and cars. Cyclists - especially those with no experience of undulating, winding roads - are a serious danger to everyone, including themselves, on most Cotswold roads, and cause great damage to the few footpaths they might try riding on (though they're banned from many).

England's the best country on earth for visiting on foot. Why complicate it by dragging in unnecessary mechanisation?

Eek... shuddering at the visual pictures being painted - bike def stays home! Now, exploring Oxford itself is obviously going to be fine on foot, but I'd also thought to base there and strike out via bus or Moreton train (plus feet!) to explore the 'Wolds. Is that a sound plan?

I keep reading dire tales of completely gridlocked Cotswold town roads, so a rental car doesn't necessarily seem to be the answer. Maybe split the time, and base a couple of days at Ox and a couple of days in a 'Wold?

"I keep reading dire tales of completely gridlocked Cotswold town roads,"

Bollocks.

Either you're smoking something or you dreamt it. We haven't even got a grid to lock.

The thought of gridlock and the Cotswolds . . . I can't even imagine where that came from.

Except maybe in the Bourton on the Water car park on a bank holiday . . . Between 11:00 and 2:30

Relax :)

'we've no grid to lock' - lol!!! Ok, my bad; a terrible choice of words. I was imagining something like my experience in some small NZ towns, where the lone narrow road thru town -often punctuated at both ends with a roundabout- could easily grind to a near halt from a mix of vehicle volume and over-hesitant tourists unsure when to give way.

Must've been taking what I read too much to heart, but just to give an inkling of where I was getting the impression from, Lonely Planet's GB guide uses terms including "besieged," "onslaught," and "chaotic" to describe tourism in certain Cotswold towns, and I read one [admittedly very cranky-pants] trip recap that groused about creeping for an hour in a line of glacially-moving cars on a summer Saturday. Even janisj previously had said about Bibury that 'just about everyone w/ a car will be trying to visit it.' :) But it can't be THAT bad if you both thought the gridlock idea was hooey!

Everybody will be wanting to park in Bibury between the Swan and Arlington Row on a summer weekend . . . Between 11:00 and 2:30 . . . ;)

"Everybody will be wanting to park in Bibury between the Swan and Arlington Row on a summer weekend . . . Between 11:00 and 2:30 "

They aren't. I've been driving through Bibury on summer Sunday lunchtimes for huge slugs of the past decade: it's the only way of getting from our house to friends not far away.

I rarely try parking, because there's no there there to park for. But once in every four or five trips, I do have to stop for all of 15 seconds while some inept antipodean makes a total cockup of reversing into a parking slot on a narrow road. Occasionally 20 secs if the incompetent nitwit is Japanese, and every couple of years a whole 30 secs if some lunatic with no experience of driving on the proper side of the road tries to park an SUV in a village God didn't design with gas-guzzling monstrosities in mind.

And, apart from the bridge over the Windrush in Burford which can take 45 secs to cross, or a stretch of the PM's route to his constituency house that the bloody security people close off for a minute, that's the sum total of all the traffic inconveniences we've suffered in 15 years.

As for the gibberish in Lonely Planet: the thing's not only written by Aussies, but they work under the direction of a self-loathing Pom who's CHOSEN to leave civilisation and live in Melbourne.

What greater guarantee of inaccuracy could there be?

LMAO @ you two!!! Ahhh, I can't wait for this trip. :D