9-10th May
Hello London!
A long and tedious flight but the Perth to London direct is not too bad a way to make the distance- at least it’s all over with in one go!
Bikes arrived intact and a quick immigration exit meant “we” had our transport assembled and set to go by around 7am… ready to face the London traffic. Maybe. We realised we couldn’t exit Terminal 3 too easily by bicycle so caught the free train to Terminal 4 to start the journey.
Much angst, a couple of close calls and quite a bit of horn honking later, we’d ridden about 8km and were back to approximately where we’d started in the first place near Terminal 3! Ah well, a good leg stretcher to start the trip. All flat and once we were away from the airport there were plenty of bike lanes and very little need to ride amongst the impatient city drivers.
We did, however, manage to time our first ride to coincide with the start of the school/work day so there were many other cyclists and pedestrians with whom to compete on the pathways 🙂
Slough. Not the most salubrious of cities one would suggest. But a 20km ride had us turning up here by around 9am- hungry, tired, cold and hoping that we may be able to check in a little early to the accommodation we’d booked. Not quite to be, so we found some sunshine in a nearby park and watched the world go by for a bit.
Isabel has been trekking around various bits of the world over the last few months and she’s made it to London to coincide with our arrival. So our cheap and cheerful triple room in Slough gave us a good night’s sleep and a lovely catchup. (And delayed the start of Neil’s plans to do lots of camping 🏕 😌)
How better to start off a UK jaunt than with a full English…
Then it was off to catch a train and do some castle ogling. Windsor is just down the way from Slough but the dynamic is rather different. Posher. Pricier. Pink shirts everywhere. Great for eavesdropping on random conversations about the merits of Eton… while spending a small fortune on a bad coffee… and an all round excellent way to spend a few hours!
Just couldn’t choose which hat to buy…
#windsor #abitposh #toomanyhats
And a Slough pub meal to end the day that set us back around the same $$ as our three coffees in Windsor and was really rather good! (ex-fish and chippy guy AKA Neil gave it the thumbs up…high praise indeed 👏)
Neil and Isabel are also fans of the “real ale”…I have yet to be convinced. Not enough fizz for me!
In the morning we part ways with Isabel for a week or so and start our cycling journey north. We’ll keep you posted ☺
Let’s go cycling 
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