A nice relaxing day at Andrew & Shelley's on Friday, where we traded a few media files (so now I have old Seinfeld to watch when desired), I put my bike together (hopefully the last time for a while), discovered my first bike-in-plane damage (cracked helmet, grrrr), went to Sainsbury's, repacked all my stuff & prepared for the cross-London trek on Saturday. My destination on Saturday was Mum's cousin's, Trish, house in Sidcup – down towards Kent. The Patricks kindly let me store the stuff I didn't need immediately in the attic & I was off to London Bridge on the tube with my bike & rather full Macpac. One small hitch was I couldn't take my bike down the escalator on to the Northern line, so had to bike a couple of stations (Moorgate to London Bridge). It took a little getting used to carrying a full pack on a softtail in traffic (they drive on the left hand side here, time to get reused to that), but it was easy to find my way & I really felt like I was in London (except the weather was nice) with the skinny streets, black cabs, double-decker buses, old stone buildings & so on. Even got to ride across London Bridge before getting to the station, hopping on a train, biking the mile or so to Trish's house & arriving at about the time I had guessed.
Great to catch up with family (Mum & I had visited last year) & later in the afternoon Trish's sister Jan called in after visiting their mother (my great-aunt, I think – I will have to get up to speed on genealogical titles with all the distant relatives in this country) close by. After a catch up, I was pleased to have a willing audience for the best of my photos from the States. Much of the rest of the weekend was spent unpacking & sorting & a few small walks. Managed to get a 500GB hard drive to back up my laptop & Sunday afternoon Trish took me to check out the nearby Biggin Hill – a famous Battle of Britain airfield – nice to see a NZ flag & some names of those Kiwis who had served there.
Monday I was itching to get on the bike – even if it was on tarmac & not singletrack. I rode northeast (got a new sim card for my rather aged, but still working, NZ Nokia) until I was about to ride in to the Thames & then I followed the cycle & footpath all the way to Greenwich.



My first attempt at dealing with British bureaucracy was my appointment at Barclays on Tuesday to open a bank account. It didn't get off to a great start when I arrived at the Hammersmith branch well early & found that it was closed for the week for refurbishment. The much maligned British customer service looked to be well deserved as no one had bothered to tell me. Anywho, I went off to the branch at Shepherd's Bush (the only thing I knew of this place was that it featured in the Only Fools & Horses song) & was very well looked after & happy to be impressed by the guy who set it all up for me. With a bit of time to kill before my next appointment I had got a rather brutal, but good haircut, from a Hungarian girl whose own haircut looked like it fell out of the sixties & took over her head. A few more tube rides (got good value from my day travel card, sixteen stations & eight lines - & a bus ride) to get up north to meet a NZ friend for a bit of a tune up for my back (we met when he was completing chiro college). Great to catch up & share travel stories (Andrew is London for a short while between months in SE Asia & a year in South America). Popped in to Covent Garden to visit a coffee shop of one of his friends, which was so small we had to share a booth with a Asian couple) & then a cider with another Kiwi. We were all off to meet some more friends before they went on to salsa lessons & I went to pick up my remaining bag from the Patricks. Who should rock up but Hayden – a family friend who was a year ahead of me at school, who I think came to my first birthday & our parents go way back. Quite amusing, as I don't think I've seen Hayden for at least six years, maybe eight or nine. A late night home after dragging my bike bag across the city.
I seem to have got my sleep-ins back to nine o'clock (it's hard) & what was left of Wednesday morning was spent booking train tickets – this trip to Southampton, Monday's ride north to Mum's only maternal uncle's funeral & then Tuesday on to Edinburgh for the festival & hopefully tattoo. And also investigating a bit of a jaunt over to Paris mid to late-September. In the afternoon Trish & I took a bit of a trip out in to the Kentish countryside to Eyrsford for a stroll. There was a great old viaduct,







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