Author: kymdt

Unseasonal Weather

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Coast to Coast – Day 3, originally uploaded by kdt.

Unseasonal weather, said the kind gentleman. That had to be the understatement of the holiday. We cycled from Whithaven in the west to Tynemouth in the east over 4 days. The first day only threatened wet weather. But the following three days had drenching rain. Unseasonably we’re told. Apparently it was dry in April and May (almost a drought I understand). All I can say is that reinforced our prejudices that it rains all the time in England.

Highlights:

1) The Greystoke Cycle Cafe (mentioned earlier) has at the ready towels for cyclists to dry themselves.

2) Lowbyer Country House. Very friendly and the welcomed us with a room with a big bath and took all of our wet clothes and dried them out for us! Lovely place to stay.

2) The lightning as we reached the top of Hartside (and the Hartside cafe at the summit)

3) The downhills… they are the best we’ve ever done. They went for ever had wonderful easy turns.

4) The scenery, the Lakes District and across the Pennines are beautiful.

5) The beer and cider.

6) Friendly people.

It was great fun, even though we were officially drenched rats. All I can say is that those altitude charts can be misleading. Helen distinctly recalls me saying that hey, we can do this it is not even as high as Mount Lofty.

Well that is true, but there were a lot of ups. There were so many ups that it justified 45 kilometres of down in the last day!!

Also, the profile doesn’t really show the fact that the English have no respect for the contours of the land. The back roads go up and down and if it is 22% gradient that is what the road will do! I recall riding past a 15% gradient sign thinking it was easy compared to some minor roads. That is how steep some of the minor roads are!

All in all, I would encourage any keen cyclists to try this trip!

KDT’s Top 5 Coffee

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London, originally uploaded by Helen K.

1) Greystoke Cycle Cafe, a barn out the back of house with toasties, cakes, and coffee. What makes it great? It’s welcoming approach and plenty of towels to dry wet cyclists. Coffee is pretty good.

2) Monmouth Coffee – Monmouth Street London. Great coffee focus with extensive coffee menu. It appears that special coffees are only available as filter coffee. Very busy with local workers getting takeaway.

3) Nude Espresso – Eastend somewhere, good coffee with schmick interior a great relaxing spot. They roast their own coffee.

4) Java – Keswick does a great mocha with Belgian chocolate. Also muffins made on site are extremely yummy.

5) Brick Lane Coffee – great coffee vibe only problem is paper cups only.

We also had some chain coffee. That was horrible. Also, you’d expect good restaurants to do good coffee. This is not true.

DC’s Final PMP

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London, originally uploaded by Helen K.

I had to track DC down in London to complete his final PMP.

It was by far the best PMP I’ve done. It was held outside Terroirs a wine bar near the theatre district. French wine, olives, chacuterie and cheese. We discovered that DC had taken the initiative and explored England and Europe widely.

His communication skills, especially written have excelled. He tailors his message to the audience. Direct and colourful to those following him on Facebook and polite and considered for those following his blog see http://dcdoesuk.blogspot.com/

There is no doubt that he is having a ball!

Boris Bikes

Posted on by kymdt



Walking and Cycling London, originally uploaded by kdt.

We rode Boris Bikes on each of our four days in London. I distinctly recall being amazed a the number of docking stations when sitting on my couch back in Adelaide when I looked at the docking station PDF. But, in a variation of Murphy’s Law, you can never seem to find one when you are on the bike looking for one to leave you bike and when you don’t need one.

Here is our list of dos an don’ts

Do
1) make sure you have a map of docking stations – that may help overcome the Murphy’s law variation described above.

2) download a map app and mount your iPhone to the handlebar – it will save you cycling the wrong direction for 20 minutes. We tried to head to the Victoria and Albert museum but somehow ended up in the inner east!?!

3) make sure when you dock the bike, that the lights appear. We didn’t get the lights once and went for a little walk only to be prevented from picking up the two required bikes. This then involves a phone call and walking back to the original docking station.

4) Do cycle near Buckingham Palace at 11:00am, it is lot easier to ride on the road (no cars) than walking.

Don’ts

1) Ride the wrong way up a one-way street. (There are many of those!) The friendly police become less friendly.

2) Avoid the roads near Buckingham Palace at 11:00am. I am throwing out a big hello to the 10s of thousands of tourists who have taken a photo of the Australian couple cycling around the Palace. We were the only traffic on the street.

3) Cycle to a docking station in a tourist area in the morning expecting a space to be available. There won’t be any! It might look like it will save time but trying to find another docking station with space can be frustrating.

4) Don’t conclude because you see a name that you recognise that you are cycling the right direction. Helen said something like “Look, that sign says St James, we must be almost there.” The fact was that we were cycling in the opposite direction.

5) Expect any street-map or sign to be helpful for finding a docking station. The only exception are the maps on the docking station. Catch 22, the problem is you are looking at the map because the docking station can’t be found (I never thought they could disappear Dr Who style).

Official Rest Day

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Like the riders in the Tour de France, every hard working traveler needs a rest from blogging. Today is it.

We finished dinner last night at 12:30 at The Ledbury. Yumm!

Until tomorrow.

East is West

Posted on by kymdt



Boris Bikes, originally uploaded by kdt.

Cycling in a big city can be exciting. London is pretty calm compared with Beijing and Shanghai the traffic is slow and generally respects bikes and the road rules. Perhaps, the hardest thing isn’t the environment around you but the inner compass.

We had plans to cycle to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was “close” and Boris Bikes were just around the corner from our hotel. After some very slow credit card transactions we got ourselves a 7 day pass and got our first bikes from the racks.

We arrived at our first turn, we had a choice of going left or right at the Strand. I was convinced that right was right and Helen was convinced that left was right. I’ve been known to be disoriented in cities before, so we followed Helen’s conviction.

We cycled along the Strand and took some turns in the “correct” general direction. I could see any signs or monuments, but Helen was convinced. As we cycled along she said “Look St James we must be getting close”. All I can say is that St James is quite popular. We kept going. I was feeling increasingly out of the way. Finally I demanded the iPhone and noticed that we had gone the wrong direction!!

Right was Right.

We ended up cycling past Kings Cross, along Euston Road, then down Bloomsbury Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, Picadilly Circus, Pall Mall.

We then arrived in front of Buckingham Palace. There seemed to be 10 million people there. Asking a local bobby we found out that it was changing of the guard. Here is a random holiday tip. The best time to cycle around Buckingham Palace is at about 11:00. No traffic!

Oh, btw, we did manage to the V&A eventually.

Foodie report…

Posted on by kymdt



St John, originally uploaded by Helen K.

Went to St John Restaurant last night!

The restaurant was quite noisy with a couple of large parties. Service was generally good, with a few long waits tarnishing the experience a bit. The food however is absolutely wonderful. It is a clean, minimal and traditional. Nothing over complicated. It highlights the best of British food.

He had potted pork with pickled cabbage, saddle of rabbit with courgettes with sides of spring vegetables and potatoes. Followed by shared Chocloate Cake and course of freshly backed Madeleines (awesome!!). She had brown shrimp and cabbage salad, pigeon and radishses.

I’d recommend everyone visit. It is a good contrast to the more complicated French food and it shows that the British traditions certainly have much to offer.