Get outta there

The day started idyllically out in the sunshine of the warehouse car park, locked out of K's place still, but substantially thrilled by a shamelessly tacky book. As soon as I'd grabbed my clobber, I was away on the canal out into the misty morning light of the huge city. Chortling chirpy h e l l o s at everyone I passed, I rode romantically slowly in order to inhale everything I could see - mainly a handsome amount of speeding commuters on their spangling new bicycles covered from head-to-toe in state of the art breathable attire, with ties and skirts flailing out revealing a potentially formal destination after they'd enjoyed a moment's beauty along the river. I'm not sure how much time had passed, but without realising, I soon discovered that I'd been riding in a completely unfamiliar direction for the entire journey, and before I knew it I'd racked up on some dodgy outer East London canal surrounded by a network of furiously paced duel carriageways .

3 hours later of attempting to navigate using my novelty tourist map whilst negotiating insanely unfriendly roads and futilely trying to head in the direction of Hackney City Farm to see my friends Magnificent Revolution [+ the donkeys] I was officially bored of London; actually yelling to myself over the insultingly intimidating decibel levels of the London traffic "get me outta heeeeeeere!" and almost straight away , I found this brilliant painting in an old advertising slot and a road that led back to Mile End [great- my starting point - ha !] .

I apologise to anyone who lives in London, but I don't know how you do it. I would imagine you wouldn't try to ride every segment of the city without a proper map, or you'd actually learn how to use the canal system to your advantage. But I couldn't have been happier to finally make it to the train and back to my little Oxford home town, where I was reunited with my parents after some time apart. Before the afternoon was through, we'd thrown ourselves into a steaming outside pool and embarked on a furious brigade of eradicating the mayhem in order to focus on pushing it to a 100.