On London

I rode from London to Bristol with some friends. We met up at Highbury Corner on Friday and cycled down to Waterloo, from where we got a train to Staines to avoid the heaving roads of west London.

The first day was lovely sunny weather. We weren’t in a hurry but a few punctures meant that we were going to miss dinner at our hotel in Froxfield, so we stopped at a pub in Hungerford for dinner before a short night-ride to the Pelican Inn.

The next day Louis & Ed arrived on the train to join us, which made us 9 altogether. There were more punctures on day two, and a torrential rainstorm which luckily started just as we stopped for a pub lunch in Devizes.

We got very muddy cycling on the tow-paths the rest of the way to Bath but we washed off in the river and arrived in Bristol in time for a drink at the Hole in the Wall. Our arrival coincided with the Bristol Harbour Festival which meant the streets were lively and traffic-free.

The battery on my bike computer ran out before we got to Bath – the total distance was about 135 miles.