Day 2 - To France Once More

I wandered out to Chris’s garage around 07:00, my planned start time. I had simply to check the kickstand that we had attempted to adjust the previous day, tighten the bolt securing the front derailleur and then head off. The problem though was that once I had tightened the bolt and rolled up the driveway at 07:05, I found my gears weren’t working; only the smallest chain-ring could be selected. There was no way I would be able to make it all the way to London, at least not in time, like that, so I quickly doubled back to the garage and got down to some frantic repair work. Unfortunately the repair of a bicycle is a matter which calls for more haste and less speed. After 45 minutes of grappling with the problem I had managed to get only a degraded level of utility; the middle and lower chain-rings were now available. This meant I had no high gears, but with some high cadence could at least make a reasonable speed.

Feeling the pressure of time I set off and despite the limitation of not being able to select any high gears I was doing well... doing well that is until I lost my way. I must have missed a turn somewhere and I found myself heading into London via Wimbledon... home of a world famous tennis tournament, which happened to be going on this very day. I got caught in the various diversions and heavy traffic associated with the event, and at one point took to walking, because I was otherwise unable to negotiate the traffic with my touring load which is both long and wide (for a bike). My Westward drift continued and I eventually crossed the Thames at Putney; an approach which added around 4 miles to my journey to Victoria rail station.

When I made it into central London the frequency of traffic lights became maddening... not quite so maddening though as the commuters on road-bikes who would jump ahead of me when the lights were red (presumably because they didn’t want to get stuck behind me) and who then turned out to be slower than me when we moved off!

Delay stacked on delay mean added to a longer route meant that I arrived at the station just as my train was due to depart (and I still had to reconfigure it to a train-friendly configuration). By the time I was ready to board it was some 10 minutes after the train had left. Fortunately I had planned for this possibility and knew of an alternate train that should still get me to the port in time.

To be continued...