August 7, 2024
Day 25: Final Destination - London
Painters Forstal, UK to London, UK
The morning started at 830. No slugs or snails to report. Solid start to the day, really.
I continued along some rural roads and farm trails for the first 15 miles of the day.
Sustrans, the UK national biking advocacy group and custodian of the National Cycle Network (of which, I followed Route 1 a lot yesterday) does pretty solid work in general out in these less dense parts of Kent.
This early part of the ride took me to Sittingbourne, where of course I bought cookies and cake which should fuel the rest of my day, for the most part, until I would eat a big dinner in London. I cannot wait to have my native South Asian food, with haste. Europe food - fantastic! But I miss spices.
As we approach London, much of the land is occupied by highways, so a lot of the cycle riding looked kind of like this. It was a bit boring, really, but thankful that at least there was a biking path alongside it rather than actually being routed onto the road.
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To stave off the boredom, I of course ate way more cookies than any human should, and sang 99 bottles of beer on the wall to myself.
London started appearing on the signs for cars pretty early around noon, but not till much later in the afternoon for bikes. I did start seeing other 'signs' of London's approach though such as the iconic double decker buses.
Around 1600 I had reached the London borough of Bexley, although this is Zone 6 London and not really what I meant when I said I was riding Milan to London - I still felt some internal pride that I "made it". Look ma, I made it.
Not to disparage Sustrans, who I am still thankful for, but this section of the UK (from the highway to about Zone 3 London) was likely the least nice bike infrastructure of the trip. There were some random times where biking trail would appear for 200 meters on the left side of the road then disappear and randomly show up on the right side of the road. To get there, you can't just cross several lanes but need to hop two curbs. Might as well just ride in the road then? I do have to remember however that most of my trip was on iconic routes along rivers or in extremely bike friendly Belgium/Switzerland. Navigating into and out of large cities always takes time, and London is an order of magnitude larger than Brussels.
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Despite these frustrations, the excitement was budding fast. I was proud to hit Zone 6, and as I got closer to Zone 1 I was giddy with joy. It's crazy that I biked all the way to London. I rode through Greenwich, where we get our timezones from, by Westminster, by Big Ben, Buckingham, and more.
What a treat. My favorite was the beauty of riding through Hyde Park to get to my final accommodation in Paddington - a basement room in a shared flat, big enough to air out all of my travel belongings and even repackage my bike with plenty to spare.
After a shower, the first order of business was to walk down the street and grab some Pakistani food. Chicken jalfrezi, maybe not the most photogenic but absolutely incredibly delicious. And I had two whole servings of naan.
The couple sitting next to me kept pointing out my tan lines and speaking in English (did they know they're in English speaking country?) saying they're glad they don't have tan lines. But these tan lines tell a story. That's the story you just read, from Day 1 in Milan to Day 25 in London.
Thanks for reading. There will be some post-ride entries when I get a chance to write them, mostly stats/learnings/what I may do differently next time. But I appreciate all who gave this journal a read and cannot wait for the next adventure.
Today's ride: 95 km (59 miles)
Total: 1,895 km (1,177 miles)
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I added a section with route details and stats to the end of the journal. I didn't share exact GPX files but I hope it's moderately useful. Let me know if there's any particular parts you want to know route advice about!
Ghent through Bruges and Oostende is extremely well marked and you follow a canal most of the way. Oostende down to Calais is also a well marked Eurovelo along the beachside, so should be a good one! Dunkirk has some interesting museums if you get time to stop by. I liked the Calais beach.
Happy travels.
2 days ago