The Oxford Green Belt Way is a long distance path in Oxfordshire, England. It follows a circular route of 84 kilometres (52 mi) through the green belt surrounding the city of Oxford.
In the east the path follows the East Oxford Limestone Heights, passing Shotover, Horspath and Garsington. It then passes through the park of Nuneham House and to the north of Culham, to reach the River Thames at Abingdon. It uses the Thames Path to reach Radley, then heads in a northwesterly direction to Boars Hill and Cumnor. It reaches the Thames again by Farmoor Reservoir and Swinford, then heads east to Godstow and Wolvercote on the northern edge of Oxford. It uses the Oxford Canal Walk for 4 miles north to Shipton-on-Cherwell, then heads south east across the water meadows of the River Cherwell to Hampton Poyle and Gosford. The path then crosses the corallian limestone hills of Elsfield and Beckley to return to Shotover.
The route was devised in 2007 by the Council for the Preservation of Rural England.
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—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)
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—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him. On one side elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature,—here they are, side by side, god and devil, mind and matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)