You know what, a lot of people love London. It's the thriving hub of our country, has plentiful opportunities, has the resources the rest of Britain only dreams of and particularly in relation to this ride, hosted the best Olympic games ever.
Now that's all well and good, but it's simply not designed for people. The roads and pavements are in poor condition, the signposting is completely random and there just isn't enough space for all the people that need to be there.
As you can tell, this is going to be a really cheery post!
The day started quite well. I woke up, had breakfast and loaded my bags on my bike. It then went downhill. Part one of my 'the road signs are ridiculous' rant, Watford. Quite a well known place, just north of London, decent football team. Nah, don't want to put that on any signs. Oh, actually let's put them on 1-in-6 signs so for the vast majority of the time you're just hoping. But I got there, bouncing along on cycle paths or roadsides perhaps, but made it. To my great surprise I found Anthony Joshua's postbox quite easily...
At this stage, thanks to the stop-start nature of London's traffic I was already behind schedule, but alas I soldiered on.
Next on the list was Pete Reed's 50th post box, this time in Chiswick. What I discovered here is that the Brent area of London must LOVE cup final weekends because it must bring some order to their roads. It was like everyone in the town had seen a documentary on how crazy the roads are in India and thought to themselves, 'yeah, that looks good'. Cars, pedestrians, bikes just going anywhere regardless of road markings or traffic signals! After fighting my through that, Chiswick was quite nice and Pete's box was easy to find...
Next up, a 3.5mile straight road to Mo Farah's first box in Isleworth (with requisite Mo-Bot)...
Before a slightly more difficult 4miles to his second in Teddington. Here I met up with Klem, a follower on Twitter @MiddleRinger, who joined me for Mo's second box...
The two of us then went looking for Wimbledon. You know Wimbledon, that world famous sporting and tourist attraction? Oh, let's not bother signposting that either. For one of the most tourist-popular cities on the planet it really doesn't want people to get anywhere.
Eventually we made it though and picked up Andy Murray's second box outside the All England Club(why he has two I don't know)...
Then a quick jaunt a mile down the road into Wimbledon centre for Sophie Hosking's box...
From here the journey became quite pleasant. Away from the overcrowded dangerously busy roads to a nice little village called Cheam, where we found the final box of the day, celebrating Jo Rowsell...
We then aimed towards Chobham to go our seperate ways, but not before a visit to an awesome cyclist's café in Ashtead @bikebeanscafe for a brew, some homemade cake and soup as well as a few pics, a £20 donation and potentially a little mention in a local paper. Honestly, if you're a cyclist and ever find yourself in the Epsom area I highly recommend it. Good food and good people.
In Chobham Klem and I separated, he returning home to Windsor as I carried on to Camberley.
As with yesterday, the day got much, much better as it went on and although there was a lot of stopping and starting all over the city, I got 7 more boxes checked off the list!
So now there are 7 days remaining, 7 boxes remaining and just the small matter of somehow getting back up to Bolton on Saturday!
Don't forget to follow @Pedal_Medal on Twitter and to donate www.justgiving.com/samlevey if you have the inclination to share my blog as well that would also be greatly appreciated!
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