20th Anniversary European Bike Adventure Day 2: London

Day 2, the day our trip officially really began! Well, sort of. It was really mostly still a travel day, but it involved a variety of forms of public transport, and actually was one of the days we were fearing the most, because it had so many moving parts, some of which we couldn't really nail down until the night before, with Martin and Mary's help/knowledge. It promised to be a somewhat stressful and uncertain day.

Except that's not strictly true either, because honestly for most of the day, we really had no plans at all. Our foray into public transportation didn't begin until about 3pm, so we had most of the day to fret about the public transportation part!

We slept in fairly well, then had a delicious full English breakfast prepared by Mary. We packed our bags back up in preparation for eventual departure, then went out to kill time and get some blood flowing through our legs again after a long day of sitting the day before. Martin gave us the map for a little in-town (Beaconsfield, not London) ride, and Matt and I set off.

Longer shake-out ride in the country, before we head out for London proper. We'll get used to riding on the wrong side just in time for the wrong side to become the wrong side again.

One of the lovely, not-trafficky parts through a park.

And it was lovely, but also a little stressful. We were riding on the "wrong" side of the road, which is tough to get used to on a bike, and even tougher when there's a decent amount of traffic and no shoulder. Fortunately all the drivers were patient and nobody tried to kill us. We ended up riding 16 miles, established our bikes seemed in good shape, and headed back to the house for final preparations.

We had tickets for the train from Liverpool Station to Harwich Station (changing trains at Manningtree), for ~7pm. Evidently it's not really feasible to safely ride from Beaconsfield to Liverpool Station, so we went down and got tickets from Beaconsfield Station to Marylebone Station. From there we'd ride and tourist a bit through London to get to Liverpool Station. Then Liverpool to Manningtree to Harwich, where we'd get on a ferry to the Netherlands!

Martin riding us to the train station.

Martin rode with us to the Beaconsfield Station, and THEN our trip really began!

Beaconsfield Station

It was a little unnerving dealing with the bikes on the London trains. We had figured it would become obvious once we got on what one does with the bikes, but.. it really didn't. A couple times a porter (?) would tell us which car to get on, but then there really wasn't a Place for bikes. So we would cram ourselves into a corner or up against a wall and try to be as small as possible, which is really hard to do with fully loaded touring bikes.

Crammed into a small place on a train.

We got to Marylebone Station and de-trained successfully, and then.. we were in London proper! With bikes! And a lot of people! And everyone was still driving on the wrong side of the road!

Arrived at Marylebone Station successfully!

Matt plugged our Liverpool Station route into his phone, and we hit the road.

The ride to Liverpool Station was exciting and terrifying in equal parts.

This snippet felt very London, with the Baker Street Station, the buildings, the being on the wrong side of the road. Seriously, every instinct you have feels wrong when you're on the wrong side of the road.

There were bike lanes most of the way (on the wrong side of the road), but also a ton of buses and cars and construction and other cyclists riding like people who live there and don't care about traffic signals and rules.

Dragon photobomb.

We stopped a few times to take pictures as we rode, and then we stopped at St Paul's Cathedral to look around and rest a bit (even though, y'know, we'd only ridden like 3 miles; 3 stressful city miles).

St Paul's Cathedral, where we COMPLETELY RANDOMLY ran into one of my coworkers!

Bikes at St Paul's Cathedral!

As I was setting my bike up on its kickstand in front of St Paul's, I turned around and.. there was my coworker Stacy! In London! At St Paul's Cathedral! I mean, I knew she was going on vacation, but I thought she was going to Paris, and the odds of us being at the same place in London at the same moment just seem.. monumentally small. But there we were!

Stacy and her husband! So weird!

Remember that time when you randomly saw your coworker, who you thought was in France, in London, and you yelled, "Are you FUCKING kidding me?!"? And then you realized there were a ton of tourists, and many children, surrounding you? And you're in front o

After photos and hugs (and me yelling, "Are you FUCKING kidding me?!" loudly in front of a historic cathedral teeming with tourists and children), we touristed a bit more, then climbed back on our bikes to finish out our ride to Liverpool Station.

Once we got there, it was very overwhelming. The Beaconsfield Station basically had 2 tracks, one each direction, and 1-2 trains total. Liverpool had shops and stores and restaurants and several floors and so many trains and tracks.

We rode to Liverpool Street Station, ate a sandwich for First Dinner, took a train to Manningtree Station, switched trains, and took that train to Harwich Station, where our NightBoat waited. I love that we could take our bikes on the trains, but man, 2 f

Yes, those are stairs. I almost killed myself and my bike getting down those stairs, but I was stupidly determined to do it myself.

We still had a couple hours before the train we were supposed to be on arrived, so we tried to find a place we could hunker down and rest and eat First Dinner.

As we ate, we stared at the departures board and tried to make sense of it. Matt found what looked like the train we wanted on the board, and there was one leaving in, like, 2 minutes. And it wasn't the one we originally planned to be on, but we had gotten the Any Time tickets, so we could get on this train if we wanted, and hopefully have less future worry about being places at the correct time. So we crammed the rest of our sandwiches into our bags and ran to find the correct track.

And we got on with a couple minutes to spare! Enough time to find a corner to cram our bikes into and brace ourselves.

We finished our sandwiches on the train to Manningtree, switched trains for our Harwich train without incident, and then watched the sun go down as our train finally carried us to our final train destination for the day: Harwich Station.

We got off at Harwich and.. had no idea what to do next. Theoretically we were now supposed to get on a ferry, but there were no signs pointing to a ferry, or water, and it was getting dark enough that it was difficult to see around us. We found a train station employee and asked him about the ferry, and he pointed out to a road that looked far away, with no obvious way to get there. We wheeled our heavy bikes around for a bit, found a way out to the road, and started riding what we hoped was the right direction!

Eventually we got to several lines of cars, buses, and giant semi trucks, and were told this was where we needed to be. (Bikes are cars for the purposes of ferry-boarding.)

For boarding the ferry, bikes are considered vehicles. Except then they are tied to the walls of the ferry. We had to deal with All Our Bags for the first time. And our room is really, really neat.

As we waited dutifully in line (we would later realize nobody cares if bikes ride up to the front in front of the cars), it began to rain lightly, and we got a lot of sympathetic looks from the cars, and an offer of an umbrella from the convertible next to us that was using umbrellas as a car top.

We made it up to the kiosk and gave our confirmation number, which got us room keys and meal tickets, and then we rode up to the giant ferry! Once we got onto the ferry, into the hold where the cars go, a crew member just sort of motioned off to the side, pointing to a wall. I'm glad Matt was there, because I never would have otherwise figured out that.. that's where we were supposed to put our bikes. Just lean them against the wall, and use some ropes tied to the wall to keep our bikes from rolling away. I guess I figured there would be a room or some bike racks or something. But nope!

Lashing our bikes to the wall.

We stripped our bags off our bikes and very awkwardly carried them all through some tiny corridors to the elevators, and then to our room!

It was a tiny room, but not the tiniest room, since we'd paid to upgrade it one level (which got us non-bunk beds and a window) (and a free mini-bar).

We had also pre-paid for a dinner once we were on the ferry, so after we dropped our stuff, we went off to find that. And it turned out to be a fancy dinner! Table reserved for us, 3 course meal next to a big window (that it was too dark to see through). We were wearing bike clothes and smelled and looked terrible, I'm sure, but nobody complained.