Reasons why riding your bike in London is amazing!

So I like riding my bike. I like the way you can interact with your environment when you are on your bike, how you chat with people at traffic lights, how you can sneak short cuts through side streets, and how you find there is a blooming fig tree in Peckham!

Firstly, I chat with people at traffic lights, and I am not the only one - people chat back to me. And I live in London. Super unfriendly London. In fact when I tell people what part of London I live in there are three normal responses -

1 - sharp in take of breathe
2 - "isn't that where Millwall is?", which I then confirm, to which they normally sharply in take breath
3 - no knowledge of where I am talking about, until I say, then what follows in a sharp in take of breath followed by a slightly apologetic look

I don't care. For the next couple of months, I live in New Cross. And people chat back to me at traffic lights. They smile, they are friendly, it's delightful.

No one ever smiled at me in a car or on the tube.

Anyway, I digress. Bikes are awesome, because of shortcuts. A lot of roads in London only allow you to toddle down them if you are a bus. They accept bikes too. There are also short cuts through parks, which are brilliant.

And finally, it was on one of these brilliant detours through Burgess Park in Southwark (which is awesome by the way), that I found a fig tree. If you are nice I will tell you where it is...

In conclusion - bikes are brilliant in every single way! Figs are awesome too. Especially when they are free.

The end!