For reasons involving minor illness (that dreadful cold that would not go away) and injury (for some reason some houses in Croydon are built with ridiculously steep & narrow stairs, and bouncing down them on your arse is not recommended) I only did my first full cycle commute on Monday this week, four months after moving.
A round trip from Croydon to Poplar is about 25 miles; about 10 miles more than what I'm used to, and with more Hills. Oh, and the drivers in Croydon are a special breed, although, I must say, not entirely dissimilar to the drivers of Tower Hamlets in many respects.
Jane and Jurek of this parish, being familiar with these roads, had already kindly helped me out with a recce ride in January (before the cold and the stairs hit me) so I'd done the route once before. Jane had also showed me an off-road route, but I'm working long hours at the moment due to the fact that my employers are saving lots of money by deliberately delaying recruitment can't seem to recruit quickly enough, which means even with the clocks changing I'm sometimes coming home at dusk, so I stuck to the road route.
I didn't get lost at all on the way there, though I stopped several times to check the map and what turn was coming up next. Once we got close to Greenwich I finally became part of a very small peleton of cyclists (rather different from when I lived in Stockwell and used CS7, which often felt like you were part of some kind of amateur TdF). Up til then I'd been mostly on my own. I guessed most of them were going to the same place as me (Greenwich foot tunnel) and followed them there.
Don't much like Greenwich foot tunnel on a commute, I must admit. Don't like walking through it, but don't like breaking Teh Roolz and upsetting peds by cycling through it like pretty much almost everyone else does. I especially don't like when the lift's there and you can see it and you have to scurry to catch it. But don't have a lot of choice for river crossings at that point - going to Tower Bridge would take me too far west.
Once out of the foot tunnel, I do at least know exactly where I am and it's plain sailing from there.
Got a bit lost on the way home. I was knackered after a hard day at work, it was getting dark, I went left where I should have gone right and almost ended up in Catford. Luckily I soon realised my mistake and managed to turn around and head in the right direction. There was a total fucker of a headwind though; I remember slogging up the hills (I'm unfit, ok?) and then pedalling down the bastards. It took me an hour and half each time, but I expect to cut that down significantly once I'm able to stop stopping and looking at maps.
Going to aim for twice a week at first. I took the Spesh Globe; it's a fully mudguarded-up hubgeared workhorse that can easily cope with crashing around some of the crappy road surfaces between here and there. It's not the lightest bike though. In the summer months (don't laugh) I might treat myself to using the rather lovelier road bike that I bought off Charlotte to do the RideLondon 100 on.
