A Bonus Blog!

28 April 2020

We have been back in the U.K. for 5 weeks now and our adoring Lifecyclers fans have been begging us for more…well probably more accurate to say that at least one person has said that they miss our blogs…a little bit : ) So, here’s a quick post about a ride that we did around London…

Sunday 26 April 20 – Around Central London – 25km

The spring weather in London has been amazing recently and we have been trying to make as much of it as possible within the limits of the lockdown. We may have bent the rules a little bit here as we were out for more than an hour doing exercise, but as we started at 6:45am we didn’t think we’d be doing any harm. As it was, there was a surprising amount of traffic on the road, but it was still unbelievably quiet even with a fair amount of other cyclists doing the same as us. The sky was bright blue, which in London is pretty unusual and we have put down to the relative lack of pollution in the air at the moment.  And it was a chilly 5 degrees Celsius when we left our East London pad.

We still have tenants in our flat and we can’t serve them notice because of the lockdown, so we are currently living in Bethnal Green in East London in a friend’s house which was, fortuitously for us, empty. So heading south towards the river, our route took us through The City, passed the Gerkin, Lloyds building and a few other famous landmarks. We then had a beautiful ride west, passing St Paul’s Cathedral…

…and into Trafalgar Square, which for once was completely devoid of tourists and, in fact, no pigeons either.  Probably because there was no one to feed them…!

We peddled along a deserted Whitehall, passing Number 10 and Houses of Parliament. We would have taken a picture here too, but Big Ben (well at least St Stephen’s Tower, which houses Big Ben) was completely covered in scaffolding so we didn’t bother. We kept going west, passed the “sneaky beaky”  buildings of MI5 and MI6 (no sign of Mr Bond), all the way to Battersea Bridge where we crossed onto the South Bank. As we have always lived in North London, the transition across the Thames to the south side was what most North Londoners experience when they do this ….our ears went pop and we got nose bleeds! We then headed back east passed a huge building development around Battersea Power Station,  the London Eye…

…and all the way to Tower Bridge…

It was then an easy hop back across the river…

…to Bethnal Green, where in true Lifecyclers tradition we had breakfast number 2 of the morning.  Today’s was an English version of the Vietnamese Banh Mi (omelette sandwich with hot sauce) as we added some bacon to it……

You may notice from this photo that Martina is wearing the same clothes as have appeared in many of our blog photos…..we haven’t been able to buy new stuff yet so we are still dressing like lifecyclers!

It did feel great to be back out on our bikes and as it was a glorious day to cycle through central London.  The lack of heavy traffic made it especially enjoyable, as did the clear air and the lack of pollution.  Perhaps we can all learn something from this crisis?

Some recent observations…

  • Considering the drastic change between our on-the-road lifestyle and lockdown, we think that we’ve actually adapted pretty well all things considered. We have both had our moments of cabin fever, but we don’t think they have been any worse than  anyone else. The lockdown is challenging everyone in different ways.
  • Going on the ride today showed just how easy it is to forget things – we even had to lay out what we were going to wear the night before…or maybe the real reason was because we were excited about getting back on the bikes again!
  • Our bodies have gone soft! Even though we were only out for a couple of hours we both felt a bit saddle sore at the end of the day.
  • We have been quite careful with what, and how much, we have been eating since we got home. I think we’ve both put a little bit of weight on, but nothing too bad and we haven’t turned into balloons yet! My appetite wasn’t too bad when we first arrived back, but over the last 10 days or so it’s rather bizarrely gone back to on-the-road hunger levels. This time, however, I can’t just keep eating as I’m not burning 4,500 calories a day by cycling for 6-8 hours!

5 comments

  1. Comment by Nigel P

    Nigel P Reply 14 July 2020 at 7:09 pm

    I am really enjoying reading about your adventures, thanks so much for writing about them! I don’t want to be “that guy”, but the past tense of “pedal” is “pedalled”…

    From a fellow Nigel, a Brit now living in the USA.

    • Comment by Nigel

      Nigel Reply 8 February 2021 at 11:53 am

      Hello Nigel, apologies that it has taken me such a long time to reply – we haven’t really been monitoring our blog since we got back home. Thank you for the grammatical correction! I put my errors down to the 1980s English schooling system! We will hopefully be back on the road soon. Cheers, Nigel

  2. Comment by Eva

    Eva Reply 4 May 2020 at 6:56 am

    YAAY for the bonus blog!! 🙂

  3. Comment by Bair

    Bair Reply 3 May 2020 at 10:12 am

    Lovely tour guides report of a sunny London! Thank you! I see you got out for a b’ramble at last…..

  4. Comment by Lani

    Lani Reply 1 May 2020 at 4:04 pm

    Yea good to see you again. add my babe to your Loooong list of, we miss you. Glad you’re still braking out for riding enjoyments.

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