red bike london
Travel Tales #1
Red Bike London
When I was in my early 20s I finally plucked up the courage to do something I’d been wanting to do since I was 16 - travel the world. Helped along by a job I wasn’t enjoying and an incredibly bubbly, English girl I became friends with at that same job.
Jackie's time in Australia was almost up and she was planning a few weeks travel through South America on her way home.
“Hey, want to come with me?”
Yes I did want to go with her.
So I resigned and left the very dull corporate trajectory my life had fallen into, and started writing the travel years of my story.
I might come back to the South America trip and tell you a story or two from that, but this story is about a red bike in London.
When I first left home I felt so intrepid. So adventurous. So free. Arriving in England felt surreal at first - the English countryside from Jane Austin novels and the very grown up and serious buildings of London.
The London metro system, 'The Tube' was initially thrilling. A real life trip around the Monopoly board – Piccadilly, Covent Garden, Angel Islington, Fleet Street, they were all there. Plus the characteristic ‘mind the gap’ alert played at each station stop.
But it didn't take long for the novelty to wear off. During the morning and afternoon peak hour commutes, Londoners are packed in there like sardines, and no one is very happy about it... And too many Aussie accents for a girl wanting to get away from all things familiar.
Life had quickly ceased to feel intrepid and adventurous.
And then an old red bicycle came into my life.
Instead of the squishy, claustrophobic commute to work largely through tunnels underneath the city, I got to experience London topside. It was funny at first to realise that stations that might take two or three line changes to get to are actually only a mile or so apart as the crow flies (or in this case as the girl rides).
I had a lot of great times on that bike, and some mishaps…
My mornings spent as a sardine in a tin on tracks were replaced by cycling through London’s streets, watching the city wake up, and observing all the little things that make a place distinctly itself, and different to home.
...Like squirrels. Squirrels!
Squirrels are fascinating to us Aussies. We’ve got possums, but not squirrels. And I am not alone here. Even my dad, who is a matter of fact, hard to impress farmer from country Victoria, spent an hour trailing a squirrel in Hyde Park, trying to get a picture. Every time he’d almost get close enough it would scurry away, but stay just close enough to entice him to keep trying. It was hilarious to watch.
Jackie and I worked together again for a while in London and would ride our bikes to work.
There was a small bridge we had to cross on the way, and there were a few steps at either end. Jackie would ride her bike down the steps, and I would always get off and walk my bike down.
Everyday I would watch her and think it looked fun and a bit scary. But she made it look so easy, so one day I finally plucked up the courage to give it a go myself.
I fell flat on my face.
I went back to walking my bike down the stairs.
And there were also tipsy rides home after a couple of pints on a Friday summertime afternoon.
We’d ride and chat and giggle our way home beside the river, feeling like we were speeding through space and time, but probably actually going very slowly.
I spent a weekend riding through the countryside with another friend Nat, exploring medieval castles, like the childhood home of poor old Anne Boleyn. It must have been late spring or early summer because the laneways were filled with wildflowers.
I also lived on a barge boat near Bristol for a while, and either had the same red bike, or perhaps it was another one. And it meant I could ride into Bristol along an old train line that had been converted into a bike path, instead of two or three bus changes. Bath was in the other direction, and there were cute little hamlets nearby with cobbled streets and daffodils everywhere.
And that picture is of me and my little sister Meg, in Scotland (taken by our other sister Stace). We rode those bikes around that Loch and Meg accused me of riding the Tour de France - because I was so bike fit from cycling the London streets. (I wrote more about that trip here.)
And then one day back in London a car hit me and my bike. I had a few cuts and bruises, but was not too badly banged up. The bike on the other hand was cactus, and that was the end of that for my red bike in London.
But it sure was fun while it lasted.
