Day 4 : Hard work followed by hilarious luxury

Today we had to double back on ourselves to get to the London Eye for the start of the Avenue Verte, then find our way out of London and down to East Grinstead. I briefly considered cutting out the central London bit and heading southwest to catch the AV that way, but we decided it was cheating and went for the whole hog. We were annoyingly unable to find the little plaque that is supposed to be somewhere near the London Eye marking the start of the AV, but we decided not to worry about it and just set off.

Fighting through the traffic is no great pleasure, as you’ll maybe tell from the video, but it’s OK. We were glad when we came out into the first park, which was Clapham Common. Things got gradually more countrysidey from then on.

I’m very tired now, so I’ll skip more verbiage – here are some more pictures:

 

 

When we finally got to the hotel in East Grinstead, we found it was as far as possible from yesterday’s strange B&B. Despite only costing us £42 each, it’s a luxury spa – with access to the facilities. So we got nice white dressing gowns and towels and used the steam rooms and jacuzzis. Hooray!

Shaun and I wandered down there and were gifted some trunks from lost property, because they had ran out of trunks to sell. I sat in the dry heat room, then the steamy sauna, had a swim and lounged around in the jacuzzi with Shaun – it was a most amusing contrast to the day of hard pedalling that preceded it.

Then we went to the pub – which was ace.  I had halloumi and chips which was a bit naughty potassium wise, but sod it.

RIGHT – NOW I AM GOING TO SLEEP.

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