London

Tuesday September 7, 2010, 10:00 pm
So here I am at a hostel in London, Kings Cross Road, sharing a room with 11 others.

The view from my dormitory window in the Clink78 hostel on Kings Cross Road.

View of my twelve-bed dormitory.

My first day in London, it's been quite a long day, starting at 5 am at Heathrow Airport. Got to customs and they ask a lot of questions, as though they assume you are suspicious. I should have been prepared for this after Steve (my boss at Yarra Valley Water) warned me, but I wasn't exactly. She asked me for the address of the person I'd be staying with. I went with John Chant, but I couldn't remember his address, just that he lived in Somerset. She asked how I knew him, I said he was a relative, a third cousin once removed. Must have sounded a bit suspicious but she let me through nonetheless. Then I picked up my bike box, wheeled it out and spent an hour or two putting it together.

About to put my bike back together after unpacking it at Heathrow Airport.

Defying all the stories I'd heard about peoples bikes getting broken in transit, mine was undamaged. I left the bike box there under a set of stairs, hoping it would be there for me to use again when I come back to leave, although I wasn't holding my breath. It was there for literally less than a minute when a cleaner came and took it away! It then took me another hour or so to get out of the airport, back-tracking several times. Then I rode the thirty odd kilometres into London, avoiding the motorways, which cyclists ate not allowed to ride on.
Here's a sign I found on the way.

Thornbury, coincidentally the name of the suburb where I live in Melbourne. 

A bike path on the way into London.

After that I spent many hours exploring the streets of London.

London

Big Ben clock tower with the London Eye in the background.

Some observations about London:

•  the weather has so far been much better than the weather I just came from in Melbourne. I do expect it to be cold when I come back to London at the end of the year in 3.5 months time to fly out again.
•  it can go from sunny to a grey sky and heavy rain, to sunny and raining and back to sunny in matter of minutes. And people say Melbourne has four seasons in one day!

Me in front of a lake in a park in London.

Moments later I was hit by a brief but heavy shower.

•  their taxis are black, old fashioned and there ate lots of them
•  driving in London appears to be very slow, the roads are pretty congested
•  there are plenty of cyclists around, probably a similar number to Melbourne, probably partly due to the previous point.
•  many of the roads are not very cycle friendly, I'd say London is less cycle friendly than Melbourne. Many of the roads have no shoulder, let alone bicycle lanes. At one stage this drove me to ride onto the footpath for a bit, and I was literally on there for less than a minute where I pulled up to check the map when a police officer came up to me and asked "do you know why I've stopped you today sir?" (he didn't actually stop me though, I'd already stopped myself to check directions before I noticed him). I replied "nah, not sure."
  "It's illegal to ride on the footpath, I'm going to have to issue you with a thirty pound fine" to which I promptly responded: "oh sorry, I didn't realise, I'm Australian..."
  "How long have you been here for?" he asked.
  "Just flew in to Heathrow this morning at about 5:00 am" I responded. He looked at me quizzically, not sure whether to believe me but eventually replied "alright, since you have literally just flown in and you didn't realise the rules, I'm going to let you off with a warning." He still spent five or ten minutes writing out that warning though, including a description of me. He was a good bloke and also gave me some streetwise tips. Lucky I got out of that one scot-free!
•  there are buses everywhere, especially the double-deckers. They get in the way and since my bike is wide and unmaneuvreable with its four panniers, it's really cumbersome. A standard road bike would be by far the quickest way to get around.
•  the traffic lights turn from red to orange to green. The only place I've seen this happen before is at the intersection of Pearson St and Victoria St in Brunswick, Melbourne.
•  I had my eyes peeled for a supermarket and it was many hours before I found one. Probably because i didn't know what the supermarket chains were and thus didn't recognise them. Consequently I didn't have breakfast until 6 pm, which was my first meal since on the plane at 4 am, 14 waking hours earlier.
•  drinking taps are also very difficult to spot, as are bike shops. Ended up having to look up bike shops on my iPhone using some free Wi-Fi I found. Then I spent £40 on a Kryptonite D-lock and cable lock.
•  hostels with vacancies also proved difficult to find. I tried about 5 before I found one with vacancies. Should probably book in advance next time.
•  all the street names remind me of the board game Monopoly. Because of this there are already fond memories attached to these street names.
•  Leicester Square closes at about 7 pm, they kick everyone out and close the gates. I thought was a bit strange, what's the point in locking it up?

I've also realised I have some invaluable things for this trip:
- my brand new iPhone 4, which I purchased outright just before I left for $999 AU.
-the E-Werk, a useful little device which connects to my dynamo hub and the iPhone and can be set at a specific current and voltage in order to charge the iPhone


- the GPS app for my iPhone (TomTom, for which I paid $120 AU in the app store). I'd say this has already saved me quite a bit of time navigating around the city.

Oh, and I've just found out from an email from a Welsh friend of mine, Simon Gomer, who I met in Cobram, Australia whilst fruit picking, that there was a "Tube Strike" yesterday and today. That may explain why the traffic was so congested and why there were so many buses and so many people on bikes. For example, I was riding along a road and gradually at each set of lights more and more cyclists accumulated, must have been about 15 of us all together weaving through the traffic. Apparently people were fighting over hire bikes in the bike share scheme too.
Cyclists here behave a little differently too. Traffic tends to move more slowly than Melbourne, so the cyclists are happy to ride in between lanes of cars rather than just on the left shoulder, mainly because there is no left shoulder a lot of the time, especially due to the buses taking up a lot of space. It seems like cyclists are more accepted on the roads here.
Also, bike lanes are liable to suddenly disappear without warning, only to reappear a little further on.

I felt quite different riding in London compared to Melbourne, much more timid, less confident. I didn't know what to expect from London drivers and London roads, or London police (although got some idea when one pulled me over for riding on the footpath). For red lights at pedestrians crossings where in Melbourne I would have gone straight through, I waited, while Londoners would cruise right through. Cyclists breaking road rules is rife. They seem more happy-go-lucky than Melbourne cyclists. They're less like scared rabbits running from a fox and more like...tame rabbits in a place where there aren't any foxes.
I hope my bike will be safe locked up overnight outside the hostel. The police officer earlier warned me that I should never leave my bike unlocked or it will be stolen straight away.
I'm really tired so might go to bed soon.

Looking to the sky from Leicester Square, London.

Ride stats:
Distance: 64.96 km
Average: 13.6 km/h
Maximum: 35.1 km/h
Time: 4:44:42