So what was the food like on the plane?
Bonus Day 3 Slow Tour: London
The object of this day in the town home to Boris Bikes and Boris himself was to sample a range of quietways, cycleways and cycle super highways while seeing the sights of London.
While we started with one plan we ended with another, in my opinion, far better one.
The ride started in Paddington and ended in Greenwich. Greenwich is:
- an area of South East London
- home to the Merdian Line, Cutty Sark, the Old Royal Naval College, the National Maritime Museum, and Greenwich Market.
- the home of time, Greenwich is where eastern and western hemispheres meet.
- famous for its naval and military connections and its green spaces.
- on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The route we took was around 30kms in one direction. We took the London Riverbus back to Westminster.
Chelsea Breakfast
The first part of the ride followed a quiet way through Hyde Park to Chelsea for breakfast at A Wanted Man.
Battersea Park
We continued on the quiet way across the Thames and visited Battersea Park. This is a big park that includes and number of different uses and has a nice promenade next to the Thames. There are some paths for cyclists and other pedestrian only areas.
Westminster and the Super Cycle Highway
We crossed over the river on to one of the super cycle highways, which made for easy, safe and fast cycling. Good integrated lights. We crossed back again over the Vauxhall bridge to experience the South side again on the quiet ways again. They are not bad using less busy roads and some infrastructure -but they are slower and harder to follow.
Transport for London are planning to change the names from quiet ways and super cycle highways to just plain old cycle ways. But it misses the point that the name actually communicates useful information. What is even worse is that there must have been cycle route called the London cycle network, that are still signed but not maintained or promoted. London cycle routes are a bit confusing.
London Tower
We continued on the super cycle highway until London Tower. At London Tower we learnt about the London river bus. This when we change our mind and decided to cycle to Greenwich.
We took the road across Tower Bridge to connect up with another quiet way to Greenwich. There is no cycle route over the Bridge but the traffic moves so slowly that a bike is the fastest way across.
Greenwich
The quiet way took us through areas definitely not on the tourist map. It is also the only time it rained. It must have been fate that it started to rain only as we came across a very nice coffee shop that did nice cheese toasties.
Well, I told you about Greenwich earlier in this post. Here are some photos from Greenwich and the ferry back.
Resources
- I could not find any useful GPX files for this ride. Transport for London website does have cycling maps, which I used to get some ideas for this ride. But, the experience is quite frustrating.
- Our Strava activity could be converted to a GPX file, by you would need to fix up some of our mistakes.
Slow tour bonus day 2: Oxford
Oxford is quite a small size and in the center it is very crowded. We couldn’t find much good in information suggesting a bicycle route either as GPX file or pamphlet. So we made one up instead.
The Bodleian Library is:
- is the main research library of the University of Oxford
- one of the oldest libraries in Europe
- the second-largest library in Britain after the British Library
- particularly rich in Oriental manuscripts and collections of English literature, local history, and early printing
- one of the most impressive anywhere.
Our route took as past some of the key parts of Oxford but also a little further a field. It is in three parts.
Our bike tour included visiting the Bodleian Library, the Botanic Gardens and a bread shop. Here some of the photos from along the route. Helen provided a good blog post on the bread shop – https://bromptoneering.blog/2019/11/07/great-stop-in-oxford-hamblin-bread/
Normally I’d provide a list of resources for the bike trip. But, I couldn’t find anything two useful. You can use our routes from Strava to get some ideas.
Great stop in Oxford – Hamblin bread
Cycling on holiday enables you to find interesting places which are not necessarily in the guide books. Our approach to bromptoneering is exactly that find a route and cycle it… if there is a major tourist attraction, we might stop to take a photo, if I’m lucky. But this approach also enables us to stop the moment we see something interesting. In Oxford it was the below sign which stopped us in our tracks.
It had all the right elements to attract Kym – “bakes here daily”, and good font. Kym managed to snaffle the last apple and custard buns (yeah us!) and they had filtered coffee (rare to find).
We later learnt the bread was made from stone ground flour milled locally. They make their own jams, as well as sourcing items they use from local producers. The taste was fabulous. We enjoyed the buns and had a great chat with the owner Hugo who was passionate about using local sources and their products. He suggested we return the next day for breakfast.. to try their bread as we would not regret it.
The next day… yes we returned..! Ah the smell of a bakery is fabulous in a morning.
We enjoyed a shared breakfast and a cardamon bun, and a cinnamon bun – delightful! We even bought a jar of their jam (let’s hope it makes it home). If we lived here we would be regulars.
If you find yourself in Oxford (thurs-sun) do your stomach a favour hop on bus (if you don’t have a bike) and go there… you will be happy!
One of these is not like the other…
I’ve seen all kinds of things in phone boxes… but cupcake pick up is my favourite. Saw this in a few different places we visited.
Luggage space
Finally… this works!
Although I find this challenging. Unsure how older people find this… slightly more than a gap.
Washing machine incident…
When in Birmingham we stayed in a place with a great view. While it was small it also had a washing machine! Woohoo – always an added bonus on holiday. On our last night we decided to use it. They are simple machines after all. Once it had completed the cycle and drained etc… we opened it and water came spilling onto the floor in front. Okay maybe it hadn’t drained… despite indicating it had. Sigh. At this point tee put it on the drain setting twice more – eventually it drained.
The machine was one of those fancy washer-dryers. Set it to dry the clothes… and guess what – yep it didn’t do a great job as they were still damp so hung these up in the room. While this was going we had put the towels on the wet carpet to remove water. You can imagine how wet the towels were after this exercise. We decided to attempt to dry these in the dryer- which also didn’t work well. We resulted to putting these on the towel rail – which was pretty hot, but didn’t really dry them either.
One we had attempted to remove as much water as possible from the carpet, Kym used his work knowledge to the problem and we put the fan in the room focused on the carpet to attempt to dry it out (hair drier was not going to cut it.).
The next morning the clothes were put through the dryers again, as were the towels. The carpet was still damp in places, so the fan was put on again – until we checked out. Did it help – yes, it was still a bit damp but not as bad.
All I want to know …who puts carpet under and in front of a washing machine?
Bonus day 1: Slow tour visits Birmingham
The slow tour has let Yorkshire for London. It could take us two and half hours on Hull Trains our, in true slow tour fashion it could take for days via Birmingham and Oxford.
In Birmingham we made up a leisurely bike route of around 20 kilometers. It was better than any GPX file I could find. It included, in slow tour style, an accidental visit to Cadbury World. Bournville is:
- ward within the council constituency of Selly Oak
- a model village on the south side of Birmingham
- site of the original ‘Factory in a Garden’
- best known for its connections with the Cadbury family and chocolate
- one of the nicest places to live in Britain.
The ride was made up of two parts. To Cadbury World and from Cadbury World.
To Cadbury World
We started near New Street Station. That was quite confusing to work out which way we should go given all the buses and taxis around the area. But it didn’t take long before we found the entry to the canal.
The Birmingham towpaths seem to be in pretty good shape. At times the path becomes quite narrow because of the bordering hedges or the right and low bridges.
Cadbury World
Fortunately, we arrived too late to get entry to Cadbury World this day. After buying some chocolate, we retreated to Bournville the model village built around the factory. As you ready earlier in this post, Bournville is one of the nicest places in England to live.
We visited a nice cafe and Selly Manor.
Returning to Birmingham
On the way back we rode though some suburbs and Birmingham University to Edgbaston and through Cannon Hill Park.
Resources
- There is no clean GPX file for this rude. You might get some ideas from our Strava accounts. Part 1 was to Bournville and Part 2 was the return.
- Cycling In Birmingham has good information to help you put your own route together.
This is London
Here we are back at the beginning… Paddington station.
They have some great bike storage on the platform.
… and the view from our room.
Happy Halloween!
As if you didn’t know this already!
