Biking in London
Biking in London is truly painful for someone who doesn’t know the roads. Yesterday mikeb and I spent the afternoon buying equipment for our tour of Sweden. He was travelling by tube; I was travelling by motorcycle. He consistently beat me to every place we travelled to. It was a miracle I got to stay in one place long enough to buy anything at all.
For instance, take the trip from my place to Decathlon outdoor-supplies in Surrey Quays. After we'd been to Infinity Motorcycles in Holborn, I returned home, only to drop the bike (smashing the right indicator housing, breaking the front brake lever, and scraping the fairing). After repairing the right indicator (with the magical duct tape!), I headed for the Rotherhithe Tunnel under the Thames.
It looked so simple on the map.
Here (marked in bright green) is the route I intended to take. Note the simplicity and elegance, not to mention concision. |
Here (marked in red) is the route I took by accident instead. Note the triple crossing of Tower Bridge, induced by a heady combination of panic, ignorance and right-turn-prohibitions. |
I arrived at Decathlon five minutes after they closed.
Fortunately, mikeb had already searched the store for the equipment we needed and was in the process of checking out when I arrived. He bought us
- a 3-man tent, weighing ~3kg (only £80, too!);
- a tiny gas cooker and a gas cylinder for it;
- a maglite torch
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which means there are only trivia (a coil of wire, a roll of duct tape, a set of mess tins, a spork) remaining on the shopping list before we're ready to go. The ferry will cost £144 one-way from Harwich to Esbjerg for the two of us together (two people, two motorcycles, one two-berth cabin); we haven't booked yet because we haven't managed to collect all the required travel documentation yet and so don't know when the earliest we can leave is. I am starting to get a bit nervous.