With many tours (Farcical and otherwise) restricted due to Covid, 2022 celebrated the resurrection of OPIG’s glorious Tour de Farce. This year’s route was nine miles and an unusually conservative four pubs.

After listening to Lewis’ conference prep talk, we left the Statistics Department around 5pm for a leisurely trundle through Mesopotamia, The Oxford Psychopath, Old Marston and out to our first rest stop, The Victoria.

The route, whilst far from the most optimal way of getting from A-B, generally allowed for quiet travel away form busy roads and to ensure that our horde of thirsty travellers could cross those few roads at traffic lights.

Refuelled at The Victoria it was onwards to food at Jacob’s Inn (known to those in the know as “The Piggy Pub”). Alas, the pigs have gone, but it still has its selection of goats and chickens.

It was at The Piggy Pub Jacob’s Inn that our illustrious leader Prof. Charlotte Deane MBE was presented with cake to recognise her recent award.

Despite nearly perishing of old age whilst waiting for OPIGlets to work out their share of the bill, we were then on to The Fishes. As the weather was fair, we followed the river from Godstow down to Binsey, enjoying the sights (and bovine smells) of Oxford. You’d hardly think that we were now only 1.6 miles away from where we started off, which was virtually in the City Centre.

Refreshed once again it was time for our last pub. COVID has taken its toll on many pubs in Oxford, restricting their opening times or forcing them not to open at all on certain days. Because of this, we’d missed our final planned stop (The Fishes) and instead called into The Punter on Osney Island. All OPIGlets accounted for, we concluded another successful Tour de Farce, v9.0.

_{All except the goaty in this blog post were taken by Leo Klarner.}