Back to the UK

Today I packed up my things and flew back to London.  Tomorrow morning I fly home to Toronto.

It was definitely sad to see the group split up and head our seperate ways.  I wish that I lived closer to some of them, so that we could see more of each other, but I suppose its nice to have some friends in England and Australia for the next time I go travelling.

Members of the group have already been on literally dozens of epic adventures: 100 mile walks completed in less than 48 hours; 1,200km bike rides completed in less than 90 hours; driving from Capetown to Cairo; and cycling everywhere from India to Cambodia, the United States to New Zealand.  I look forward to hearing about their future adventures...and contributing some more stories of my own.

Despite the lack of pedaling, today's travels were pretty tiring.  After a 30 minute drive to the Nimes airport, I flew to Luton airport with a few other members from the trip.  My bike was travelling in a "please take pity on me" clear plastic bag that Kevin gave me.  Happily, it seemed to survive the trip without injury.  (At least I haven't found anything yet.)

From the airport, I took a shuttle bus to the Luton rail station.  That was where things went slightly off plan.  Because of construction, I couldn't take the direct train from Luton to Gatwick.  In fact, I couldn't even take the train, tube, train combination that I had planned.  Instead, I took a train from Luton to Ketish Town station, walked to King's Cross station (where trains weren't runing today), took a taxi to London Bridge station, another train to Gatwick and a taxi to my B&B.  All of this was done with my large purple backpack (thanks for the loaner Jenn) and my partially disassembled bike.

When I got to the B&B, I put the bike back into my hard-shell case and I'm watching a bit of TV now before bed.