I’ve been cycling to work pretty much every day for six months now. For some reason I chose one of the coldest, darkest, windiest days of the winter to start and now we’re in a lovely warm stretch with long summer evenings so I’ve seen most things that London can throw at you. A few things I’ve noticed:
- It really doesn’t rain that much in London especially in the mornings
- There are some hilariously bad bits of ‘cycle path’ around the city which stop and start without any warning
- Pumping your tyres up makes a big difference
- The number of cyclists seems to increase almost every day — the Old Street ‘pelotons’ that build up just before 9am are now often 30–40 bikes strong
- There’s a lot still to do on safety — and it’s better to choose safe routes over more direct routes in a lot of cases
- Cycle theft is still a big problem — I’m very lucky that I can store my bike in a secure area at both ends of my commute. Hopefully things like this will help though.
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