Advertisement
Published: October 13th 2007
The Temple Of Mithras
2nd Century AD Roman ruins (actually a lavatory) discovered in front of my old workplace in Bank.All geared up for first day of riding the treadly, new bike shorts, top, glasses, lights, computer, change of clothes packed for when I get to work....all set. Got 10m when I discovered I had a flat. Doh!
Saturday 19th May Today Em and I rode to my work in Bank as a trial run so I could get used to the route I'd be taking starting from Monday. It only took about 30 min and that included stopping to check the map a few times. We rode past my new work and up the road to St Paul's Cathedral, where I'd seen a fox running around a week earlier. We checked out the gardens and the exterior of the massive church before rolling down to the Millennium Bridge a few hundred metres away.
From there, we crossed over London Bridge back to Borough and the Borough Markets. Unfortunately all the stalls of fresh fruit and meats were just packing up by the time we got there, but the time was 4pm and we had to catch a bit of the FA cup final that was on today. There was a little pub
just down the road and although it was absolutely crammed full of people we managed to squeeze in and caught the last half hour or so. The score was 0 - 0 when we got there so we hadn't missed out on much but in overtime the pub erupted when Chelsea scored a blinder against Manchester United and it was all over red Rover.
Sunday 20th May Not to let the dust settle on the bikes we took off today destination Richmond Park, the largest Royal Park in London. We shall see if it is the best. Our route took us through Wimbledon, mostly a quiet and green area and we ended up in Wimbledon Common, a huge park in itself, with a big lake, sporting ovals and of course a fair amount of tennis courts. This wasn't THE Wimbledon but still, it was Wimbledon and they were tennis courts. Heaps of people playing too, might see if we can hire a court one day. Anyway, past Wimbledon Common adjoined Putney Heath, a natural unmaintained forest popular with bike riders and joggers. Twas quite nice, reminded me a bit of the Forest Of The Dean.
Richmond
Park also adjoined Putney Heath and it was massive at almost 1000 hectares, the largest open space in London. The pastoral landscape of hills, woodlands, ponds, gardens and grasslands set amongst ancient trees was quite amazing considering the close proximity to the hustle and bustle of London city only 10 kms away. I was even more amazed to see a large herd of deer standing around eating grass near one of the large hills so I had to go up for a closer look. I would never have thought I would see wild herds of deer so close to the centre of one of the biggest cities in the world! Some of them had rather large antlers, and although I've never heard of anyone being attacked by a deer before, this was the season they give birth so I didn't want to push my luck and get too close. I still managed to get within 20m or so of the pack and they didn't seem to bother too much.
From here we thought, there's no way we want to ride all the way back home now, so we plotted a route to the Richmond overground station where the trains
Oh Deer!
Richmond Park posse. can carry bikes. We cut through the middle of the park (we gotta come back here too ) and exited the park at the north western corner. Just up the road was a lookout with a magic view out over the Thames winding its way through a lush valley. There were a few people there sitting on benches with pints of ale in their grasp, and it looked rather inviting after a day in the saddle so I sniffed out the source of the brew, a pub just across the road, and purchased a few. At this point we decide we want to move to Richmond .
Advertisement
Tot: 0.218s; Tpl: 0.028s; cc: 13; qc: 68; dbt: 0.1155s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
