Will Saturday 21st be a difficult day to travel through London?

[plum]

I want to go on holiday touring in France, leaving on Saturday 21st July. Birmingham - Dover involves changing trains Euston/St Pancreas at 8ish in the morning while lugging a fully loaded bike. I've done it before, but this is right up against the Olympics isn't it? Not being a Londoner I have no idea how miserable an experience it is going to be trying to get through London or use trains on  a day like that. Anyone know is extra unpleasantness expected or will it just be the usual amount of unpleasantness?

[SlowCoach]

The Olympics Opening Ceremony is on July 27th - I think you'll be ahead of the rush.

[Wowbagger]

Which train co serves Dover?

[rower40]

In that direction (Euston to St Pancras), it's almost not worth getting on your bike.  Just walk along the extremely crowded pavement of Euston Road.  But the eastbound road is even busier, with three lanes of $any_vehicle, and a left-hand lane for buses and taxis.

I'm assuming you're using South Eastern Trains "Javelin" service from platforms 11-14 of St Pancras, via the High-Speed-Line to Ashford.

[Kim]

Would be my preferred approach.  HS1 is pretty bike-friendly, and Euston and St Pancreas are practically next to each other, linked by a hideously busy road with perfectly good buslanes in both directions.  Use pedestrian tactics where appropriate, especially on the way back to Euston.

The lifts at Ashford are incredibly sluggish, don't expect to make any quick changes there.

[plum]

Nice, I'm encouraged. Not sure which train yet out of St Pancras, there are two choices one of which involves an extra change.

[Redlight]

You should be fine but worth checking the Transport for London web site, which has a section called Get Ahead of the Games, that shows you where they expect there to be problems at every station from the run-up to the games (i.e. now)  right through to the end of the paralympics.  It's pretty impressive - for example, it shows that a specific station will be fine at 3pm but the third circle of Hell at 4pm, so you can plan your own travel around it.

[Psychler]

You should be fine but worth checking the Transport for London web site, which has a section called Get Ahead of the Games, that shows you where they expect there to be problems at every station from the run-up to the games (i.e. now)  right through to the end of the paralympics.  It's pretty impressive - for example, it shows that a specific station will be fine at 3pm but the third circle of Hell at 4pm, so you can plan your own travel around it.

Plus one for this, however it's only been produced by computer modelling.  Use it to plan your journey and then leave plenty of extra time!

[SlowCoach]

You should be fine but worth checking the Transport for London web site, which has a section called Get Ahead of the Games, that shows you where they expect there to be problems at every station from the run-up to the games (i.e. now)  right through to the end of the paralympics.  It's pretty impressive - for example, it shows that a specific station will be fine at 3pm but the third circle of Hell at 4pm, so you can plan your own travel around it.

Plus one for this, however it's only been produced by computer modelling.  Use it to plan your journey and then leave plenty of extra time!

Somewhat off topic, but the computer modelling predicts that the worst day for traffic congestion will be the day after the closing ceremony, when everyone plus their grandmother will be heading for Heathrow airport. There are no transfer passengers at Heathrow that day - just flights out.