Cycling in London

I've been waiting for ages for my folding bike to arrive. At last, here it is:



I'm really pleased with this. It can be folded in under a minute, and I can carry it round the block without my fingers going numb. The purpose of this is to whizz up from my mainline station in town to where I work. This could be a 25 minute tube journey or a fairly random amount of time on the bus. It's 10-15 minutes on the new toy.

I've found cycling in London perversely a lot easier than in Surrey. There are more paths and stop areas, and most drivers have by now seen a cyclist, and understand why we sometimes do odd things. We like to keep moving, and out of harm's way, so we don't always keep to the left where we can get squashed. So the taxis and buses all nod me through. Contrast this to leafy Surrey, where the 4x4 crowd think they have every right to blare their horns if I so much as think about using the road creatively.

And now for something completely different ...

Although Mayor Bozza is (was?) a cyclist, I fear that we have to fight for our space. So I was up there again for the weekend's naked bike ride, as reported in Londonist. This is partly a pro-cycle jamboree, but also somewhat an anti-petrol patrol and a little bit plain old naturist party. At least a couple of my hobbies represented then.



I took a small number of photos, but not as much as the gleeful spectators or some of the other riders. Have a look at the other Flickr WNBR groups (e.g. here and here) if you want confirmation of just how beautiful and funny the human race can be when it gets naked on a bike!

Obvious warning: depictions of nudity, blah, blah.