Botley Road is the main arterial road into Oxford, England from the west. It stretches between Botley, on the Oxford Ring Road (A34) to the west of the city, and Oxford railway station, close to central Oxford.
The road passes Osney. A number of large out-of-town shopping stores line the route. The road is designated the A420. It becomes West Way to the west. To the east past the station it becomes Park End Street. Oxpens Road leads off to the south at this junction. Along its route are a number of bridges, as it passes over various parts of the River Thames.
Tributary streets as well as most of the road between the railway station and the Beaumont veterinary practice are mostly residential, and are flanked by two large parks (Botley Park, adjacent to West Oxford Community Centre, and Osney Mead, towards an industrial estate). The Botley Road is an important bus and commuter route to Oxford from Cumnor, and Seacourt Park and Ride is located near the junction with the A34.
Eastbound, it has a bus lane from the ring road until just before Osney Island, at which point there is a set of bus advancement traffic lights. It has cycle lanes in both directions.
Quotations
Author and Oxford scholar C. S. Lewis mentions the road to Botley comically in his autobiography. Describing his first-ever arrival in Oxford as a young student, he writes, "I sallied out of the railway station on foot to find either a lodging-house or a cheap hotel; all agog for dreaming spires and last enchantments. My first disappointment at what I saw could be dealt with. Towns always show their worst face to the railway. But as I walked on and on I became more bewildered. Could this succession of mean shops really be Oxford? But I still went on, always expecting the next turn to reveal the beauties, and reflecting that it was a much larger town than I had been led to suppose. Only when it became obvious that there was very little town left ahead of me, that I was in fact getting to open country, did I turn round and look. There behind me, far away, never more beautiful since, was the fabled cluster of spires and towers. I had come out of the station on the wrong side and been all this time walking into what was even then the mean and sprawling suburb of Botley."[1]
Crime novelist Colin Dexter writes: "Beginning its life under a low (Head Room 12ft) railway bridge, and proceeding its cramped and narrow way for several hundred yards past shabby rows of terraced houses that line the thoroughfare in tight and mean confinement, the Botley Road gradually broadens into a spacious stretch of dual carriageway that carries all west-bound traffic towards Faringdon, Swindon and the sundry hamlets in between. Here the houses no longer shoulder their neighbours in such grudging proximity, and hither several of the Oxford businessmen have brought their premises."[2]
References
External links
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