This is another one of those times when I am doing the blog
a day late. The simple reason is that
yesterday was such a full day that by the time I got back to the hotel room at
around 11:30 p.m. I was shattered and wanted to get to bed as soon as I could to
take advantage of my exhaustion and get a good night’s sleep. Rather than start writing and wake myself up
before going to bed. So here we go one
day late.
The journey to London was pretty standard, the only
difference being that with it being half term for schools it was definitely
quieter, even to the point where there were plenty of seats on the train and
everyone managed to get two seats to themselves.
I left Doncaster with the weather being pretty windy but
overall dry and light cloud, I arrived in London to pouring rain and bad wind
lashing that rain around. So it was an
underground walk to the office just so I could keep dry.
Also with only arriving at 11:30 a.m. it was a busy day with
only a very brief moment to have one walk around the stations and that was only
because one of my meetings finished earlier than planned. But it was a welcome relief to get out of the
office even if it was for 15 minutes and of course I have to keep the steps up.
The steps have become a whole new story since the whole
family have now downloaded the Withings app which measures steps and places the
whole family on a leaderboard. This
competitiveness started last week with Gilly, Jonny and myself fighting it out
for number one on the leaderboard, whilst I am sure this is supposed to be a
fun activity, it became a real sport, as soon as someone was out of sight
another person would be going off for a walk,
the results ended for last week with Jonny on top with 103,000 steps, Gilly
second with 94,000 steps and myself dragging in third with only 70,000 steps
which I blamed on the fact I was working from home and spent a lot of time sat
at my desk. This week will be different.
Work finished just after 5.30 p.m. for me and I made my way
to a new hotel for me this week as I am staying at the holiday inn Regents Park
which is near Great Portland Street tube station and rather than try to drag my
suitcase through the streets I caught the tube and wasted more stepping
opportunities.
The plan for tonight was to meet up with my Wigan colleague
and Selby, Liverpool and Nottingham are both on holiday this week and at 7.30
p.m. I was sat in reception waiting for him to turn up. He did at 7.45 on his Boris Bike as he had
got lost. He deposited it in the nearest
rack and we walked on toward Regents Park.
This got me thinking, I would like to have a go on the Boris Bike and with
that thought we walked toward the park and to the next Boris Bike rack. This was the first of two firsts for me. It took me a few minutes to get the hang of it
and get my first bike which I videoed a quick vlog of my travelling on the bike
and the link is here.
I got my first bike at around 8.00 p.m. and the rules are
that you pay £2.00 for 24 hours use and then the first 30 minutes of a bike is
free and then £2.00 increments for every 30 minutes after, so what most people
do is you pay the £2.00 and then use each bike for 30 minutes, drop back into a
rack and walk to the next set of racks to pick up a new one. So by 8.30 we were cycling faster than Chris
Hoy to get the bike back into the rack in time which we just managed to
do. We then recovered by walking along
Primrose Hill and the next bike rack.
Grabbing our next bike we cycled along St John’s Wood and to Lords
Cricket Ground as I have never seen Lords before I did manage to get a look at
the playing surface which was nice for a cricket fan and I got my second first
of the day.
But we did not have long to linger, the clock was ticking
and we had to find another stand to put our bike back which we duly did. A quick check of the app and we walked the
short distance to another rack and picked our third bike for the night. This allowed us to cycle our way back through
Regents Park and frighteningly through the traffic as we headed south into
central London. We parked the bikes at
BBC TV centre and had a look at one of London’s icons. This gave us a chance to do some walking as we
looked for somewhere to eat for the night.
It was getting a bit dicey as it was approaching 10.00 p.m. and I know a
lot of places stop feeding people at 9.00 p.m.
We were lucky and found a pub called the Fitzoriaty or something like
that and found some very nice food for less than £10.00 each, which is good for
central London. If anyone is looking for
somewhere to eat in London and doesn’t want to pay ridiculous prices then pubs
do offer good food at really good prices.
We left the pub before 11:00 p.m. and parted ways as Wigan
was staying at the Double tree in Islington whilst I was over toward the
west. The route home was spent going
from street corner map to street corner map, I am not sure who’s idea it was
for the street corner maps but they are brilliant and that person needs a
knighthood. It is hard to get lost when
you can check maps every two minutes.
As I said earlier I got back at 11:30 p.m. and wow was I
ready for bed. I basically did the necessaries
before snuggling up and enjoying a good sleep through until my alarm woke me up
at 6.30 a.m.
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