Dieppe to London

Tuesday December 21, 2010

Standing on the top deck of the ferry, looking over the back with semi-trailers being loaded in.

I woke up in the waiting room at the port in Dieppe at 3:30 am after a brief doze. It was time to get my gear together and jump on the ferry. It wasn't until 5 am that I was finally on board, because it took a while for all the semi-trailers to be loaded onto the ferry. 

I found a nice comfortable seat and dozed off at about 5:45 am, then woke up at 8:30 am so that I had time to eat breakfast before disembarking the ferry, which was due to arrive in Newhaven, England, at 9 am. I ate the cereal with the long-life milk that I'd brought up to the passenger deck with me, while others were purchasing their breakfast on-board for an inflated price - but I was too frugal to do something like that.

The ferry arrived on schedule at 9 am, I disembarked with no problems, rode my bike along the designated route from the pier, somebody checked my passport and asked me a few questions, then I was free in the Motherland again! The first task was to find a Wi-Fi connection and look at the map on my iPhone to work out how to get to London. So I rode along, and saw a sign that said "London 58". "Piece of piss," I thought, "I'll be there in no time!" I had the whole day to get there, so I casually rolled on and soon found a McDonalds, a convenient place to stop for free Wi-Fi. I spent a few hours on the iPhone there looking up hostels in London, trying to find he most suitable one to stay at (plenty of choice!). I also chatted to three of my little sisters on the phone: Silkom, Rachel and Rosanna. Rosanna was actually in Zoersel, near Antwerp, Belgium with her Belgian boyfriend Sam Conix - she would be spending Christmas there with his family. She also told me about how she had a lot of difficulty getting from Siena to Antwerp because the airport in Pisa shut down for three days. She said she spent the first night in a hostel, then they slept at the airport, but she said it was a fun experience. Glad she enjoyed that.

Afterwards I looked at the map on the iPhone to figure out a suitable route to London. I realised then that the 58 I'd seen on the sign earlier was actually in miles, not in kilometres as I'd become accustomed to the previous few months traveling in Mainland Europe. That meant it was at least 93 kilometres to London by the most direct route - further than I'd been led to believe. Oh well, still wouldn't be a problem covering that distance by the end of the day.
I headed off around mid-day, on an "A-grade" road, which meant it was a very busy road. It was narrow and had lots of trucks, I didn't feel safe. There was still plenty of snow around on the sides of the roads and in the paddocks too.

I stopped in a little town called Lewes before 2 pm for lunch, as soon as I spotted a fish and chip shop. I was hanging out for fish and chips actually, hadn't eaten them for months so I pounced at the opportunity, and they didn't disappoint.

I kept going before long, turned off the main road to take a quieter country road and avoid the traffic. According to my map, I wasn't too far from a bike route which supposedly led all the way into London, so I was heading towards that.

I was happily cruising down a hill into a small town called Keymer, and started braking slightly when suddenly I heard a huge explosion, as though someone had just fired a firearm. The sound echoed off the surrounding shops, and a few passers-by stopped and looked to see what had happened. It took me a moment to realise what had happened - the bang had actually been my front tyre exploding! How embarrassing! 

I came to a stop pretty quickly since my front wheel had essentially fallen apart and no longer turned freely. I had to laugh; I'd been 3.5 months with no major bike problems, or at least none that had stopped me, and then on my final day of touring, the final 80 kilometres of my 9000 kilometre journey, and my tyres explodes on me!

Tyre blown apart - note the stray piece of rim hanging out. This happened on Keymer Rd, descending into Hassocks, England.

Close up of the cracked rim.

Close up of the cracked rim. 

I inspected the damage, and discovered a large section of the rim had broken off. Argh, what a bummer! I'd gone through three rear rims, and now one front rim as well, in only 3.5 months! The rear rims hadn't exploded violently like the front one just had though. You know, in all the bike riding I've done throughout my life in Australia, however many tens of thousands of kilometres I'd cycled, I'd never worn out a rim, and now I'd gone through four of them in as many months! The back one was presently cracked, which had happened the previous day, but still holding. So I would have expected the back tyre to explode, not the front.

A middle aged bloke who'd seen/heard the incident happen stopped by and offered a hand, and some advice. There wasn't much he could do though. I asked if there was bike shop nearby, he said there wasn't, and that my best bet would be just to hop on the train to London. I thanked him and he was on his way. I stood there on the side of the road for a while, not knowing what to do. Then a young bloke of around 18 years stopped by on his fixie, and also offered a hand. He was very willing to help actually, and I was grateful. He said there was a bike hire/service centre just down the road but he wasn't sure if it was open on a Tuesday or not, he suspected it wasn't. And he was correct. So it looked like my only option was to catch the train into London. How disappointing that I wouldn't be able to complete me loop of Europe on the bike, and I was so close! 

The young bloke told me a bit about himself as we walked to the nearby station in the town of Hassocks (which is the neighbouring town to Keymer, right beside each other). He was into his mountain-biking, and was still at school, trying to get a good result in his final year so that he could get into medicine, I think he said, from memory.

He took me through how to buy a ticket for the train to London, which I purchased for £11.40 - not cheap! I thanked him kindly for his help and he was off. 

In the centre of this shot, you can just make out a man riding off on a bike - he's the bloke who gave me a hand.

I plodded to the platform to wait for the train, which arrived before long and I hopped on. Luckily it wasn't peak hour so the train wasn't crowded - otherwise, according to the woman who sold me the train ticket, I wouldn't have been able to take my bike on it. 

Florey and I traveling on the train to London.

I accidentally fell asleep on the train, which I was wary of doing because I needed to disembark at a certain stop - London Bridge - as specified on my ticket, and I didn't want to miss it; not having a good idea of how the London train system worked, I didn't want to risk getting fined. I woke up in time for my stop though, and got off at London Bridge, then went for a wander in search of wi-fi and a bike shop. I had an app on my iPhone that showed me locations of most of the bike shops in London. There was one just a block away, Evans Cycles, which is a major bike chain in Britain. So I went in and asked if they could rebuild my wheel; unfortunately they didn't have the rim for it. I walked another few blocks to another bike shop called On Your Bike, but they didn't do "while-you-wait" services, so I kept going. I crossed the river heading north, over what must have been London Bridge, and got to another Evens Cycles, called Evans Cycles St Paul's. They didn't have the rim I wanted either, the Mavic 317, but they checked their other stores for the stock and suggested I try Evans Cycles Waterloo Cut So I crossed Blackfriars Bridge heading south, and found the bike shop. Thankfully they had the rim I needed, and they were able to rebuild the wheel for me (I couldn't just get a new wheel because of the dynahub), but I had to leave it with them though, and I'd be able to pick it up the following afternoon. That meant I had to walk all the way to the hostel. 

The hostel that I'd picked out that morning was 7 miles away, which I figured was too far to walk, so I picked out a different one using the Hostelworld app. I decided on one called the Phoenix Hostel, which was still a good 6 or 7 kilometre walk. I didn't mind, except that it was really difficult carrying the four panniers plus the handlebar bag, because they're not made for carrying by hand! I got there just before 10 pm I think, checked in and carried my bags upstairs, then returned downstairs. The downstairs area was actually a pub, which is the case for many hostels, so there were some randoms in there that weren't actually staying in the hostel. There was free tea, so I helped myself to that, and started chatting to the bloke beside me. His name was Nathan Millward, and as it turned out, he had quite an interesting story himself. He'd recently ridden a postie bike from Sydney to London! What an impressive journey! He had plenty of interesting tales to tell, and we chatted for hours. I found that we were really on the same page with many things, and we'd also had some similar experiences, doing a long, challenging, somewhat unplanned, self-supported trip through untraveled lands by bike (Nathan on a postie bike, me on my push-bike), camping along the way gaining interesting experiences and prevailing through any challenges we encountered. He actually wrote a book about it, called Going Postal, and I've been meaning to get my hands on a copy and read it, but I haven't yet. I think I'll order a copy now. Check out this link if you want to read the blurb: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=e8Iglppm6XwC

I can't remember why he was in the hostel that night, something about doing some freelance work for a car magazine I think he said. Anyway, he was a top bloke, and it was great to chat. It wasn't until about 5 pm that I got to sleep that night!

My route for the day, Newhaven to Hassocks.

Overview of my route from Rome to Hassocks.

Ride stats:

Distance: 27.1 km
Average: 18.9 km/h
Maximum: 38 km/h
Time: 1:26:08  

Total ascent: 200 m

Total descent: 152 m