On Saturday, we followed our favourite ride from Charlbury, via Middle Barton, to Banbury – except this time with stickers.

So you can now, for the first time in n years, find your way along Route 5 from Kiddington to Banbury without a map – even on the rather winding section through Bloxham. We need to go back at some point to add two diagonal arrows in the southbound direction (one near the Warriners School, one at the farm near the windmill), for reassurance more than anything else, but it’s looking pretty good. Perhaps the best thing about the blue signs is that they’re their own form of advertising: NCN 5 is now so much more visible in Bloxham, in particular, and hopefully that’ll encourage local people to explore the route in either direction.

Then, on Sunday, we cycled to Woodstock – in particular, Blenheim Palace. Blenheim is on Route 5, too, but we took the opportunity to go via Ditchley Lodge Gate and the long avenue towards the memorial column. The avenue is very definitely off-limits to cyclists – “Footpath Only, No Motorists, No Bicycles” – but for the next bit – “except on business”. And we were on business, for it was the first Bike Blenheim Palace, and we were helping on the Sustrans stand.

And what did people want? They wanted maps. By the time we turned out, all the NCN national maps had already gone. I’d designed a leaflet for the route from Witney to the Cotswolds, and the nice people in Bristol had printed a bunch; we ran out of that by about 3pm, too. The Phoenix Trail map (Thame-Princes Risborough) was in high demand – lots of families wanting traffic-free routes.

It was a really encouraging day – for the Sustrans ranger work, of course, realising that most cyclists actually like the NCN and aren’t quite as rabid as certain forums I could mention; for our nascent efforts to improve cycling in Charlbury, demonstrating exactly why it’s worthwhile developing better routes and facilities; and for the OSM surveying work for OpenCycleMap, which provided the underlying data for the Witney-Cotswolds map and could be the foundation for a thousand such leaflets.

It is my most estimable pleasure to bring two of the greatest Richards of all time, each of whose contribution to society is only matched by the other’s, together at last.

I’m so, so sorry.

Mum’s wonderful dog Sandy was put to sleep today at the incredible age of 18.

Lovely bungalow with stunning views for sale in Charlbury, which is a smashing little town with four pubs, five churches and lots of map ninjas. Go on, you know you want to. More here.