The Journey Home - Basal Switzerland to London England to Vancouver

October 24th we decided to travel from Bern to Basal stopping in Soloturn/Selzach along the way to pick up our bicycles. This turned out to be a very good idea as we had to catch the train at 7:02am in Basal in order to make it to England by the end of the day on the 25th. We landed in Dover via the ferry from Calais, France shortly after 9:00pm, what a day! We had to take 4 trains through France including a 2 hour stop in Paris where we had to walk to a different station.

Dover was beautiful with it's white cliffs and humble castle. I wished we could have stayed there longer. The guest house we stayed at was uncommonly well priced and the beds were the most comfortable we have slept in since I don't know when since they were better than our own at home. We even had a breakfast of cooked eggs bacon and sausage, which I missed dearly.



From there we made our way to London where we eventually found our hostel just outside of Greenwich in the community of Depfort (Ghetto). The hostel was nothing short of hilarious even if we were slightly upset and disgruntled when we arrived. It was actually more of a bar with some rooms above it. What a joke, if you want to party it was fine but that wasn't our aim we just wanted to be comfortable. In any case, we stayed because it would have been too time consuming to move. There was a cool church nearby where pirates got the idea for the skull and crossbones (apparently) and also where Peter the Great is buried.



Staying in Deptford turned out to be a classing in disguise. Around the corner in perhaps the oldest building in London, having survived The Great Fire, I discovered the last custom lugged steel frame building left in London, Witcomb cycles. Yes the place where Richard Sachs and Peter Weigle learned their trade. Barry Witcomb even chatted with me for a bit telling me some of the history. They are getting some more business again, especially with the fixed gear popularity. I was overjoyed and I even got an oversized bike box from them that allowed me to box my 62cm bike without removing the rear wheel!



We didn't see or do to much in London. We went to the Royal Observatory which lies on the Prime Meridian and they have a green laser (or something) so you can physically see it! Good thing we went at night. It made for a better picture. Greenwich strikes me as being very similar in demographic to Main Street Vancouver. We also visited the West end of London where we saw Buckingham Palace and Piccadilly Circus and that's about it.



I also met up with a friend from Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario) and we went out for a few pints and reminisced about our undergraduate days. The next day i was back to Vancouver. Goodbye Europe/UK.