Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

I've got a training course coming up early September. The venue is close to Tower Bridge. It's for 3 days (Wed - Fri).

Normally I train into London each day for this sort of thing. But that makes for a long tiring day. So I'm now looking at staying in a hotel.

The question I wanted to ask is do you think I could get a hotel somewhere in the vicinity and manage to park my bike somewhere during my stay?

Main reason for doing this being to attend the Soho meet on the Friday :-)

If not I can just train down before and back up after.

Cheers,

/2mths

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

Hey there :)

You could always park at my place, about 5 mins by bike from London Bridge, 3 stops (or so) on the Northern Line and then 10 mins walk from Oval Tube. Or, if the timing is right - can pillion you back and forth.

Gated Community with CCTV, bike out of sight of the road etc.

Dont have spare garage space, but as said its well off-road, might even be able to stick the bike in the back garden - fiddly but do-able.

If its the right week, there is always the SELKENT meet too on the Weds.

Let me know :)

David

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

That might be cool.

Dates are Weds 5th Sept to Fri 7th Sept. Course times are 9:30 to 17:30.

I'd be looking to drop the bike off... probably Tuesday evening and then pick it up again Friday afternoon. The SELKENT thing (if it were the right week) would be cool though if possible. Don't want to be a pain though.

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

Travelodge are doing some realy cheap deals at the moment i heard. They have a few hotels dotted about central london. And i guess all you want is a place to sleep at the end of the day so their nothing fancy rooms could be ideal.
The ones i've stayed in have always been clean and had decent telly chanels too.
http://www.travelodge.co.uk/index.php

hth

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

Argh - What a blummin' nightmare London is.

Spiderman - thanks for the suggestion. I had though I'd already checked them out and dismissed them due to cost (my company is trying to be really tight at the moment and I'm therefore trying to do my bit, getting this training course at all was lucky). Actually I don't think I had and if I'd been cleverer it might have helped.

Basically I have been a muppet and didn't book anything last week (I'm not used to this hotel malarkey and it put me off). I figured I could just train & tube it everyday (as I've always done in the past). But now of course I realise half the bloody Tube system isn't running due to strikes.

I'm not really looking forward to the rest of this week.

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

No worries.

typical luck eh, you think you'll just do what you're comfortable with and then the bloody tube goes on strike. Great.

Hope it all works out for ya mate and feel free to ask away if theres anythign us londoners can do to help you out mate.

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

if you can let me know where your train comes into and exactly where the course is i'll find out about bus options, etc.

it's do-able, but if you're travelling at peak times you will have to allow a lot of extra time for your journey

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

Buses - They are scarier than Hotels!

Apparently the Northern line (or Black one as I call it) goes from Kings Cross St Pancreas to Monument, which is a big chunk of the journey from Euston (where I get into London) to Tower bridge (roughly where the course is).

So I'm going to give that a go.

SoulKiss suggested I try riding it - so I might give that a go on Friday and then get along to Soho Square.

Thanks for the advice etc peeps.

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

Hey buses are great. you get to watch all the fit city birds wandering around at lunch times.

And then get mugged when the local school kicks out and the bus gets rammed full of hormone fuelded boys n girls. Now whats scary about that? :lol:

I love buses and would in all honesty allow for a longer journey by bus than do the tube at all. Londons a pretty place when the sun shines and you aint driving so not suffering the fools on the road.

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

Want me to come meet you at the 1st Services on the M1 (as leaving London) - about J3 ?

Can then guide you down to London Bridge.

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

The Northern Line is running fine, so you should be OK.

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

Northern line running fine?
Something for the history books.:)

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

oh yee of little faith...

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

I've only just spotted this! Sorry not only am I a wimp but slow too!

Well I'm here. 7:12 train into Euston for 8:00. 15 min walk to King Cross, 10min wait to get to platform, 3 attempts before boarding a tube, 20 mins down to a station connecting to monument, 15 min walk and I found myself staring at the map the realising I was actually there. Hooray!

Saw one bloke just getting off his bike at a nearby bike bay, but he had the last space. However I'd detoured slightly on the walk to check out a likely looking bay and there were only two bikes in it, space for I guess another 6 (4 if you park like me). Whether I could find that bay is another question. How much trouble would you get in for pushing your bike on the pavement? Lots I thought so, ok I won't do that then.

All the walking meant I got to see more of London's roads than I normally do. Was kinda nice observing the bikes in the traffic. One bit near Tower Bridge where the lights changed and all these different bikes set off, jostling for position, lots of different noises from them. Then after a couple of cars caught up a cruiser put-putting along (they really don't strike me as great city bikes?).

Well maybe more from me later. I'm not sure if I'm going to ride tomorrow or not, but I'll definately give it a bash Friday. Thanks for all info on here and offers of help. I hope to make it worthwhile tomorrow and or Friday.

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

LOL - no probs

With the tube strike off I will be free to come guide you if you wish - been ferrying Vixis to work the last couple of days :)

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

You sure? That would be really cool but seems like a lot of your time taken up and at the wrong end of the day.

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

Hmm lets see......

I can stay in bed, or I have an excuse to go play in the traffic on the bike.........

What time do you want to meet at the services :)

David

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

Sorry - Again i didn't see this till waaay too late. I was expecting to get an email notification of any thread updates... what I didn't realise was that you posted this so soon after my last post that I was still on the site, hence no notification email.

On the positive side of things...

As I was leaving the training place I happened to glance through an office doorway as I walked out. I realised I'd seen a helmet on a window sill and did a bit of a double take and then back tracked to look at it again. A bloke in the office saw all this (walls were partially obscured glass) and gave me a bit of an odd look and asked if he could help in the "what do you think you're looking at" kind of way. Well I mumbled something about wondering if the helmet belonged to anyone in the office (of course it flipping well did) and he said it was his. So I asked him where he parked. Turns out there is an NCP car park no distance at all from the building and there is free bike parking in a dedicated area on the 1st floor with security camera coverage. Woohoo :-) He said there were always spaces so time of arrival wasn't an issue.

Re: Staying in \ Travelling into London - asking the locals
 

I MADE IT! I MADE IT!!

WooHoo :-)

Course is starting now so gonna update this post as and when I can. Brief highlights...

Set off a bit late 7:15. M1 roadworks are even longer than I remember (I'm sure they are actually longer) which kinda lost me some time. Hit the end of the M1 in about an hour dead. Then the real fun began. By luck rather than judgement I got onto the A41 (ask SoulKiss about the route ;-)) and tried to just keep calm. I'm a bit confused about Bus lanes, I thought you coudln't use them but lots of bikes were and bikes were drawn next to buses so I followed the bikes after sitting in teh traffic for a while.
Err kind of got it a bit wrong on the navigation front and ended up going through Regents Park rather than round. But managed to recover that.

update later...

Bimbled along a bit more. Not being too cheeky but occastionally following other bikes up the outside etc. A learning run really. Took quite a long time. Nearly lost faith in my navigating and went to do a random turn off in teh direction I thoguht I ought to be going. Pulled into middle of road, was indicating, but then bottled it and carried on instead - which was good almost immediately I could see a road sign showing a strange U shaped bit of road to go straight ahead and that was exactly what I expecting to arrive at. Down Prescott St and the carpark was at the end. Squeezed past the barrier went upstairs and parked with all the other bikes in the area set aside. :-) Walking out I saw a bike coming in the exit and the barrier for that is a lot shorter so obviously room to get a bike past easily, noted for tomorrow.

So bus lanes... Some you can go in and others you can't???

Training starting again...