The End of the Epic Bike Ride

I made it to the end. The last few days involved battling miserable weather between Lincolnshire and London, struggling with...well...London, and finally making it down to the coast. In the process, I managed to take a caterpillar 60km - no idea how, he just crawled onto me in a bus stop and I only noticed him when he crawled up my neck in Peterborough. London, as usual, was the source of much heart-ache for me. 

I stayed with my brother and sister-in-law-to-be, who graciously offered up their couch. However, London's bumpy roads managed to pull my bike rack off twice - something that hadn't happened previously on the trip - and getting lost trying to find my way out did little to improve my antipathy towards the city. I've discovered that the only Londoners willing to speak to a stranger aren't Londoners at all, since the only ones who gave me directions were northern or foreign. Londoners, it would seem, have two responses to "google maps has got me lost; how do I get out of this city in the direction of Brighton" - "Brighton's far," and "oh, you'll never get there." Thanks, that's really helpful. 

Brighton, on the other hand, is easy to navigate and has friendly locals; the only possible hindrance is the proliferation of what my aunt calls "bastard hills". The last thirty-odd kilometres on the A23 is enormous hill after enormous hill, peppered with road works for added challenge. So much so, I had to stop and eat the last of the plumpy nut bars (not their official name, but they taste reassuringly like Plumpy Nut, the fortified peanut goo that UNICEF gives to malnutrite babies) that Mum had sent me just to get over them.

I'll write about Goodwood later, because that's a piece for another website. Have a great week, everyone!