Wow! What a brilliant weekend I had with SouperLouper when she came to visit from the Wild West erm... Country.
On Saturday we woke to bright blue sky and sunshine so jumped on a bus to the nearest Boris Bike station and hired bikes. Having never done this before, it's surprisingly easy to work out what to do and soon we were pedalling through the streets of London bound for nowhere in particular.
This nowhere-in-particular route took us through Marylebone, up into Fitzrovia, across to Holborn, Farringdon, up to the Barbican and around to St Pauls where we stopped for lunch and a look at the Occupy London protest.
We then headed down the river bank to Blackfriars, along to Embankment and Westminster, up past Downing Street, waving at Nelson at Trafalgar Square before turning left up the Mall. There we cycled past the front of Buckingham Palace, up Constitution Hill, through Hyde park Corner and into Hyde Park.
This led us to the Albert Hall into High Street Kensington, up past the Palace, and around Notting Hill to a docking station by Portobello Road.
It was marvellous. I loved every minute of it, which surprised me because I've always been a bit nervous about cycling in London due to not being able to hear what's going on. However, throughout the day I just reminded myself to think like a car and not cycle in the gutter. And it seemed to work.
Sure I experienced first hand the impatience of London drivers and their need to over take bikes even when it's not physically possible, and sure there were some scary white van man occurrences but on the whole I was complete inspired by the idea of cycling in London and due to the fact that I know all the quieter back roads, I'm actually thinking about cycling to work.
All I need is a nice bright fluorescent jacket to make me stand out as I go on my way – anyone know if they do these in pink?
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