London Calling

A few months ago we moved out of London to Bristol. To non-Londoners that might not seem a big deal but London is a hard place to settle in and having invested 8 years of my life there it was time to go. I've continued to work in the big smoke each week, mainly on Protect The Human, commuting each week and staying with a friend.

Having mentally made the break I could no longer Brompton. I'm not going to bore you with the details but the Brompton is fantastic and I can hardly imagine life without it now. I cycle to the train, fold it in up seconds and pop it alongside the suitcases. I reckon I've saved about £200 in two months and countless hours of travel time.

The Brompton is really nice to ride and as long as the tyres are pumped up hard I can keep up easily with most cyclists on London's streets. The fold mechanism is amazing and incredibly satisfying, here's a video showing how small it goes:



I have quite a few other essentials to help manage the commute, the most critical being a broadband dongle for the laptop. It's a 3 supplied dongle and works pretty well most of the time but is a bit variable depending on the phone signal. The image below shows everything the cycling train commuter needs for a couple of nights in London (the pic is annoted with notes if you visit the photo on Flickr).