We thought it would be fun to ride across London. Our train from Bath arrives at Paddington Station; we need to get to Fenchurch Street Station. Taking the bikes on the tube in the middle of the day sounds like hell; we choose to ride. I think we could have a lovely time, riding through the parks and having lunch near some London icon.

The reality is when we get off the train it is raining. We eat mediocre food at the station waiting for the rain to stop. We do ride through parks: through Hyde Park and Green Park, and we stop to wave at Buckingham Palace. Neil and I are quite cool about it, but the bikes have never been here before and get a little royal struck.

The Buckingham Palace detour leaves us with no good way to get to Fenchurch Street, so we ride through the guts: along the Strand, take a GPS-oops out and back on Waterloo Bridge, pass my favourite lions at Trafalgar Square, along Fleet Street, and, just before we reach Fenchurch Street, we sashay past St Paul’s Cathedral.

St Paul’s has a special little place in my heart. Once, a long time ago, in a life far, far away, I was part of a little band of techies from a Californian startup, who had the arrogance to claim the world’s fastest Autocad, measured by how fast we could render a line drawing of St Paul’s Cathedral using a unique 1980s combination of processor and graphics cards and Autocad release something-very-early. Whether we did have the world’s fastest I don’t know, but I tell you, I saw that cathedral being drawn hundreds, if not thousands of times, all in the name of work.

Now I dodge London buses and barely have the chance to take a peek at St Paul’s, but that’s OK, because the line drawing is etched into my brain.

Fenchurch Street doesn’t come soon enough, but we are finally there. We are later than planned, and have to brave a crowded train heading out of London at around 3:30pm, destination Essex. Doing this kind of commute with loaded touring bikes is not something I would recommend.

Stats for the day

• Distance travelled: 10.7km
• Climb: 47m
• Moving time: 57:15
• Average speed: 11.2km/h
• Average temperature: 23C
• See our ride on Strava.