An early morning, a split up because we only had one bike, a tube ride and a serious run around by terrible Parisian instructions had us panicking, and finally missing the Eurostar. Fortunately they have a forgiving, just catch the next one policy. A couple of hours and a long tunnel later we where in London.
After two and a half months it was beautiful to be back in an English speaking country. It's actually subtly stressful to not be confident the person you are about to speak to will understand you. It's also nice to be back on the left hand side of the road (although it took a while to get back into this normalcy). We stepped of the train and immediately in front of us was a Lebara stand the PrePaid mobile sim cards we have been relying on for data in each country we have visited. 20 quid later and we had two working mobiles, two gig of data, free calls and free texts between us, they didn't even need our names.
Having done some research the night before Reuben hired a Boris Bike and we headed off to Re-Cycling a 2nd hand bike shop near Elephant and Castle. 230 quid later and Reuben rode off on the beast Mk.2
We picked up a new rack for Reuben's panniers but it wouldn't quite fit the bike (custom job due to the disc brakes) so Reuben bought a file and we sat outside a nearby pub drinking the local brew, regaling locals with stories of our travels and filing the rack down to fit.
It felt like a good start to London, and it just felt bloody awesome to be out of Paris.
Once we where both mobile again (YAY) we headed over to south bank to check out the Eye of London. It's just a crazy tourist hotspot, not up our alley really so we headed to our hotel in Greenwich.
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| Anne-Marie and the bug spattered Eurostar |
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| A screen grab of Reuben's mobile's GPS as he hits a new speed record on Anne-Marie's bike (can you guess what's really going on?) |
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| Filing down the new racks for Beast Mk.2 |
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| Anne-Marie in front of the Eye of London |
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