What it is like to bike ride in London

Photos top: Free Cycle Storage at Liverpool Street Station and a tfl poster for this summer's campaign to make cycling more acceptable
middle and bottom: selling pieces of junk bike in Brick Lane, and very witty activist "don't park, dump your car" signs outside Wieden and Kennedy advertising agency nearby

I'm spending today loading my touring bike as tomorrow at 11:45AM I have to be at Thurrocks Services in East London for the pick up by European Bike Express, EBE. It sounds easy, right, East London, and Epsom is SE of London, and in a normal city without traffic from hell, it would only be about 15-20 miles.

I ain't riding it, folks. Tomorrow I get up early to put Gulliver, my fully loaded bike, onto the South Eastern train from Epsom to Waterloo. I will get to W'loo before 8AM, when non-folding bikes on trains are banned for 3 hours. I will then walk Gullliver out of W'loo, using the handicapped acccessible exit #3, and likely walk it along the Thames Path and over either London or Tower Bridge, heading for the no-barrier entrance to Fenchurch Street Station. A ride up in the elevator [gosh I hope it's working! I checked last week, but they're constantly working on stations and rails around town] to the platform, then the C2C train to Chafford Hundred, a station that isn't an 1840s-era staircase-to-the-high-street special. The no-bikes-in rush-hour doesn't affect outbound trains at 8AM. From there, a few miles alongside the A10 to the pickup point, which looks like [thanks Google maps!] a motorway truck stop. I've been pestering the contact person at EBE for tips because, let's face it, I'm a middle-aged solo female cyclist on her first real bike tour going to a country where my grasp of the language leaves much to be desired.

By 1:45AM on Wed, assuming everything is fine, I should be using my credit card to check into the Premiere Classe hotel at the EBE drop off point in Tours, France. Then it's Loire a velo!

I'm a bike commuter from Seattle, a place with a politically active and quite effective bike lobby. I've had the chance to visit a much bigger and more complex city, and see how things works here. It's fascinating. Some of the things they do, Seattle should do. But London's Cycling Minister Norman Baker might benefit from a little bike holiday to the Pacific Northwest.

In a nutshell, London isn't yet in that happy nirvana of "Share the Road". Instead, it's still a lot of "get out of my way you !&*!%**! hippy/idiot/wanker/moron/prat/git/[fill in a culturally meaningful expletive of your choice here]. I've read too many scary stories in the free copy of the Evening Standard I pick up at Waterloo every evening. There's too many cases of cyclists, often women, being run over by lorries driven by European drivers in London's congestion zone. Now, what the heck are big trucks doing there at that time of day I wonder? Also a case where a cyclist took on a cabbie who ran him off the road to pick up a fare. The cyclist says the cabbie choked him unconscious with the cyclist's own scarf after telling him to, well, you probably guessed what was said. Now the cabbie is suing the cyclist, but I forget on what grounds, dinging the paint work of the cab perhaps? Who knows. Seems like there is a lot a mutual cyclist/driver hatred, and plenty of blame to go around. Motorists speeding and practically running you down on a pedestrian crossing, cyclists scaring the living daylights out of pedestrians when riding on the sidewalk.

What am I learning? Well, although it looks so cute, I would skip the scarf while cycling. I would wear a helmet, even if it flattens my hair and the locals look at you funny. If a double decker bus pulls up on my right I would get the hell off the road and jump up on the kerb. But I wouldn't ride at road speed into a bunch of pedestrians, I would deal with all the stares while I clippity clop in my outfit of parrot-colored clothing and flourescent cleated shoes. And I would walk the bike. Actually, I'd change my pedals and ditch the bike shoes if I lived here, but I certainly wouldn't don the high heels + dress+ cute hat outfit that is so popular. While it makes you look normal, it's dangerous for people here to use their London roads as sartorial venues. London isn't Oxford or Cambridge, or those towns where you can apparently tool around on your "sit up and beg" bicycle, with a cute puppy in the wicker handlebar basket. That puppy would be road kill and a bike is a vehicle. I don't like the playfulness approach. But I realize you have to start somewhere.

When I got here in May, I thought Mayor Boris's Cycle Superhighways were already running, and I thought they'd be segregated bike-only lanes with a barrier between the cars and bikes. Looks like it's more promise that reality, and a lot of take a paintbrush and paint an existing lane green. The start has been delayed to July, and there is both interest and skepticism in the idea. Not only is it Superhighways, it's things like the now branded Barclays Cycle Hire scheme, with expected 400 docking stations and 6000 bikes, at £1 for 30 minutes, also launching in July. Not quite the Paris white bike scheme, but similar. Perhaps I'll try out a white bike when I get to Paris in July.

The "ride it's good for you and good for the planet" approach is active. Looks like there's a bike week later this month, and a new campaign, showing a union jack made out of green things is running in the Tube. And the tfl posters are out there trying to convince meek and nervous cyclists to "Catch up with cycling." Hmm. Nearly every woman, irrespective of age, I've met here basically thinks I'm nuts to plan a solo bike tour that involves camping. Boris, you've a l-o-o-n-g way to go to get some buy in on your admirable scheme. But I hope it happens. There is so much to see in London, and doing it at the speed of the bike is great.

As for me, it's "B" day for me tomorrow. I am finishing up reading French Revolution, by Tim Moore, a ride done along the Tour de France route back in 2000. Let's hope things have only gotten better in the past 10 years. I'm not doing any piece of this year's T de F and I will miss the finale on the Champs d'Elysees by a few days, as I think I am scheduled to leave Orleans the day the tour rolls into Paris.

I think I'll save all those hors categorie climbs for the future.

The blog updates will become less frequent from this point, until I figure out French Internet cafes. And, this is assuming that I'll figure out the ridingand navigating and camping beforehand.