Day two started well - my alarm woke me up at 9 for a 10 / half 10 departure. In terms of things going well, that's pretty much as far as it went that morning!
Got up at 9.30, made myself beans on toast for breakfast which took me about half and hour to eat and I ended up leaving about a quarter of it due to feeling incredibly bloated and a bit nauseous. Had a very slow shower, got dressed and packed up and eventually setting off at bang on midday. The ride to London was good though, after cruising through the Oxford city centre on a sunny afternoon, I gently made my way through little country villages and lanes until I arrived at Rickmansworth after crossing the M25, then going straight into Watford on the A road, which turned out to be a bad idea.
Following on from day 1, lessons learnt on day 2:
- Navigating London with a 1:900,000 scale map with no road names is nearly impossible.
After eventually making it through Watford and ploughing straight into London on the A5 (Edgware Road), I turned eastward towards the general direction of Holloway and zigzaged through a residential area, ending up at Highgate. After asking an elderly woman on a bike, I found out I was just at the top of the hill and about 5 minutes away from Holloway. I arrived at my cousin Ben's house (same cousin who put me in touch with Olivia and my bed for the first night) not too much later than had planned, had a nice hot shower, a curry and a nice evening and sleep. A much more positive end compared to the start of my second day.
As the title of this post suggests, the next two days were a little damp. After leaving Ben to crack on with some of his speech writing (if you're ever in need of a brilliant speech then Ben's your man, especially if it's about German politics, a field in which he is highly experienced!) in a cafe near his house, I set off towards Fleet Street to have lunch with another of my cousins. It started to lightly drizzle as I was weaving my way through the London traffic and after a lovely lasagne and chat with Amy, we stepped out side to ridiculously heavy rain. I arrived in Barnes (just over Hammersmith bridge) absolutely drenched and knocked on the door of my Aunty Debs and Uncle Roger, much to their surprise! They took me in, fed me and dried all my stuff for the ride to Canterbury the next day.
For the first time in the trip so far, I got up, had breakfast, packed up and said goodbye to my hosts on time. I steadily made my way across London until I reached Dartford, where I followed the A2 all the way to Canterbury. From there, it was a couple of miles down a country road to the village of Wingham, where my sister's friend was kindly putting me up for the night before I got on a ferry in Dover. It rained with varying strengths for pretty much all of the 75 miles but fortunately I was more prepared than the previous day and it wasn't anywhere near as heavy so I actually didn't get as wet. I was also helped by the fact I had a nice warm place to stay, with another nice (homemade this time) curry and shower, with all my stuff washed and clean for my trip over the Channel.
Another huge thanks to Ben (doubly for putting me in touch with Olivia), Amy, Aunty Debs and Uncle Roger and the Hencher Family, for putting me up, feeding me, giving up their lunch break to see me and generally making England much more pleasant than it would've been if I was in a tent every night!
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