Today was yet another ‘scorchio’ kindof day. Possibly the hottest of the year yet, I’ll refer to BBC weather later to confirm that claim. I had been quite bold in telling a number of people that this weekend I planned to do a 50 miler’, sadly I arrived home 17 miles short of that. Took me a little while this morning to muster up the enthusiasm to get in the saddle. The trouble I often have is in deciding where to go. I’m not very keen on going to the same places but I’m also not that good at memorising a new route before I set off. So I eventually decided to leave but without any real idea of where I was going. At least that way I had nothing to forget. I had asked Claire for any suggestions and she’d said how about Hyde Park… ‘perhaps’ I muttered… or maybe Greenwich… ‘yeah could do’. So with those rough guidelines I was off, initially sticking to my normal work route which takes me along Bayswater, the north side of Hyde Park. At around 8 miles I was at Hyde Park, through previous mis-adventures I already knew I couldn’t cycle round much of Hyde Park, so I found the main artery running through it from North to South ‘Broad Way’ and got myself down to Kensington. From there I hopped on Kensington High Street west bound and turned left onto Earls Court Road. Following that long old road you eventually get down to ‘The River’ and Battersea Bridge. Being a fan of bridges I crossed it. I followed that road for quite some way and found myself at Clapham Common. ‘I know where I am’ I thought. I turned left and was heading towards Clapham itself, I headed left towards the ‘Old Town’ and ended up … after a while … back in Battersea this time in Battersea Park. I then crossed another bridge, Chelsea bridge I think, back onto the north side of the river. I followed the rivers edge east bound and before long was beside the houses of parliament. Now I’d seen one tourist attraction I figured I may as well see some more so looped round parliament square and headed up Whitehall towards Trafalgar Square, from there I got onto the Strand. I followed the Strand onto Fleet Street and beside St. Pauls. By now I had not crossed a bridge for some tens of minutes so crossed London Bridge. Ah Claire mentioned Greenwich, I’m now on the road to Greenwich, funny. So I was now on my way to Greenwich, past Bermondsea, Deptford and I was in Greenwich. The heat had started to take its toll, I was a little parched so locked up the bike, popped into Marks and Sparks and grabbed a drink and cheese roll. A brief stop to eat/drink and I then carried my bike down through the foot tunnel linking Greenwich with the Isle Of Dogs. Annoyingly lifts at both ends were out of order. Now I made my way towards West India Quay (or at least thats where I was trying to get to) several roadworks forced me onto the east side of Canary Wharf. Finding my way back I cycled through sailing past several security checkpoints. I had now crossed to the west side and got onto Commercial Road, and then Commercial Street (imaginative road titling in London). Just past Spitalfields market I was back onto the A10, a couple of miles later I was home. Now mileage wise I knew I was probably a little short, my speedo told me it was 33 miles, however an accidental full-reset occurred last week on the way to work when I was fiddling with the buttons so the little widget didn’t have my correct wheel diameter so I could only assume it had massively under estimated my distance. Several hours of Google mapping later I can confirm that it was almost exactly 33 miles that I covered today, the little darn widget was right, grrr.
For the full route, click the image below…
