Over the weekend I tried out my route to Clapham Junction. On paper the route should take roughly 30 minutes but in reality it was more like 45-50 minutes. What annoyed me was the amount of traffic lights that always seemed to turn red when I approached :-(. What also annoyed me were the number of cyclists who ignored the lights and simply inched out until a gap in the traffic was spotted. This is not the sort of behaviour to enamour car drivers to the cyclists cause!
I was impressed by the number of cyclists out and about. I tagged along behind a guy who obviously had been cycling in London for a while. While I sat behind a queue of traffic he whizzed past them on the right. I followed suit and soon had the hang of reading the traffic better and positioning myself on the road.
It’s early days but even in the short time I have been ‘on the road’ I feel I am a little more confident. I think researching the route definitely helps. On the way back I changed the route slightly as Queens Road is not really that nice. I ducked up towards Peckham Rye and hooked up with LCN route 22 which is very pleasant and away from the heavy traffic. The downside is that on the way back I took almost an hour and I had to contend with Vicars Hill which is a bee-atch.