Too many cyclists are unaware of the cool back routes that whisk you quickly and quietly along traffic-free paths.

Many routes are poorly signed and the city needs an updated cycle map, but these deficits are compensated by the excellent opencyclemap.org/.

My favourites include Barracks Lane, the river and canal towpaths, and the crème de la crème – Marston Cycle Path.

Cyclists travelling from East Oxford into the centre have two options. The quickest and most direct is the vile Cowley Road–Plain–Magdalen Bridge corridor.

However, a small detour from Cowley Road (no detour at all from Headington) takes you along the bottom of South Park (via Union Street and Morrell Avenue) to Marston Road.

Turn left at the Somerset pub, go down Ferry Road and turn left again at the bottom.

The cycle path leads over two small meadows which are variously filled with reeds, grazing bulls, or floodwater. It’s a rural idyll in the very heart of the city, and an extremely pleasant way to get to South Parks Road.

Happily, the brutal mugging of Kentaro Ikedo next to University Parks hasn’t stopped this popular route staying busy year-round.

Soon, the county council hopes to convert a footpath into a cycleable bridleway, from the Marston end of the track north into Old Marston, which will make this route even more popular.

The only downside is that the path makes no sense for journeys from the east to the south or west of Oxford.

There is talk of building a foot and cycle bridge across the Thames at the end of Jackdaw Lane (off Iffley Road), along the Aston’s Eyot path and over the river to where the Four Pillars Hotel is. It’ll be very welcome indeed when it appears.

Cycling around the city is fairly straightforward once you have a cycle map or some insider knowledge. But working out how to cross the ring road to get into the countryside flummoxes Oxford cyclists.

So this year, some of Cyclox’s bike week rides (June 13–21) focused on routes out of the city, with rides south to Abingdon along National Route 5 (which passes through central Oxford), north to Woodstock, and west to the cyclists’ mecca, the Eight Bells pub at Eaton.

I went on the ride on Friday June 19 to Brill, a hilltop village just inside the Buckinghamshire border with its own windmill.

The route led over the ring road to Elsfield. Fifteen of us cycled past the Abingdon Arms in Beckley, then on to Woodperry and the open fields around Horton-cum-Studley.

After just one hour we found ourselves cycling over a bridge over the M40. It was a great feeling to have cycled all that way – by car it would have taken 30 minutes at 70 mph to get that far.

From Boarstall, it’s a gentle climb up to Brill. The sweat cooled us as we sipped beers in the gardens of the Pheasant Inn. We cycled back down via Oakley.

The return route took us south along downhill lanes via Worminghall and Wheatley to Shotover Hill. Old Road, Wheatley, turned into a bridleway and climbed steeply up to the top of Shotover.

The ride ended with a bumpy stretch across Shotover Plain and down the narrow road to Old Road, Headington, and home.

It’s well worth leaving the ring road behind and enjoying the tranquility of the countryside by bike. Try it this summer.