I tried crossing London using only City Bikes

I’m cycling in London from the most Westerly to most Easterly Santander Cycles bike racks, to see how long it takes, how close to the Thames I can stay, and what I’ll find along the way. I also can’t use the same bike for longer than an hour and have some other restrictions which make this challenge a lot harder than I’d originally expected.

This was a fun challenge using only Santander cycles to get across the city, it was fun to experience the London cycle hire system. See the bike lane network and some famous landmarks and spots on this London bike ride.

I’m here in Raven’s Court Park here in the west of London and I’m going to attempt today to cycle all the way across to the east of London using only public city bikes. But because renting one bike and just cycling in a straight line across London isn’t actually going to be all that interesting, I am so lost right now. I’ve decided to set myself three rules. Oh, I’m in a tunnel. Rule number one is I can only use official Santandanda bikes and these must be picked up and dropped off in their bike racks. Now, this is not a sponsor video in any way. I just don’t really like those bikes that you can leave anywhere on the streets in cities. So, for this challenge, I’m just going to stick to the ones that you have to leave in an official bike rack. Rule number two is I can’t ride the same bike for longer than 60 minutes. Now, this isn’t an arbitrary rule just to make the video a bit more interesting. It’s actually because on the day pass that I’m using, if you do ride for longer than 60 minutes on one bike, they’ll charge you a penalty. And to be honest, I don’t really want that. And rule number three, because I don’t want to just blast in a straight line across London, I’m going to set myself the challenge to stray no further than 500 m from the rivers at any one point of this whole trip. [Music] Yay. So, I managed to get my bike in the end. It’s difficult if you don’t have a UK credit card. The other thing that I didn’t think I’d have to contend with is behind me, they’re actually filming something being London, probably either the bill or casualty. So, I had to keep waiting in between takes before I could hire the bike cuz the bike was in the background of the shop. By the way, I’ve got my first bike now. So, let’s start this clock and set ourselves for the first hour. Oh, and also work out where the river is. Bit of a main road coming up. See, this is my first issue is how am I going to contend with main roads like this? This is the Hammersmith flyover, and I really don’t want to be going down here on a bicycle. So, um, that’s what we want. Now, we can cross over the main road and make our way down to the river. So, we are 7 and 1/2 minutes in. One thing I want to be careful of is not doing too many stops just to have a look at the view and see what’s going on because obviously if I’ve only got 60 minutes per bike, otherwise I get charged more. But you can’t help it when it’s this pretty to stop and look at the sights. What bridge is that one? Is that Pney Bridge? I think that is bit early. Oh, they built bridges low in the old days, didn’t they? Yeah. Putney Bridge. That one start of the uh boat race. The Cambridge Oxford boat race. All right. The first of many bits of bad tourist information I give you on this video today is that’s not Putney Bridge, that’s Hammersmith Bridge. But to be fair, I did move out of London about 25 years ago, even though I spent pretty much half my life here growing up. But this is fantastic. Beautiful start to the trip. Nice and easy down the temp’s path. This is great. Oops. Sorry. Don’t already lost. How can I get lost when I’m just following the river? [Music] You can get electric like ebikes from Santander at certain stops. I’m hoping we’ll pick one of those up along the way today, but this isn’t one. Thought I can’t start with electric. That’s a bit of a cheap. Sorry to interrupt you. Filming. Yeah, filming my journey. I’m going to try and make my way all across London. I’m looking forward to see that one on YouTube. Have a nice day, mate. Just got to walk my bike on this bit. Uh just a hello to the security guard who works here who was interested in the fact that I am trying to ride a bike uh all the way across London. Uh thanks very much if you’re watching. I didn’t catch your name, but I hope you’re enjoying the video so far. Almost halfway into the hire of this bicycle. We have to give it back before the 60 minutes is up. I haven’t got as far as I probably would have liked to. I will be honest. So, I’m not just saying that for like YouTube drama. Yeah, I’m I was just hoping I would have got a bit further. Also, the reason why that’s concerning me a little bit is because I didn’t get started until 11:00. Oop, speed bump. About 11:00 this morning, local time, just because, you know, had a couple of pints with a friend last night. Had a bit of a line this morning, a lazy breakfast. So, I haven’t got quite as long as I would like for this whole trip to get across London. However, saying that, uh, at least these paths are pretty quiet right now. Uh, I just know as we get closer to the sort of central central parts of town, things are going to get a little bit busier. No, this is wrong. Um, one other thing I’m trying to do with all of this is not resort to my Google maps if I can help it and try and use like more organic maps that are around me or just follow my nose. And as anyone who knows anything about London obviously knows, this is the very well recognizable, easy to spot Putney Bridge. That’s the official start of the boat race. Oh, why are there steps? [Applause] I’m just thinking I’m passing a bike dock here, which is actually really well positioned to do a bit of a hot swap if I want to. But how long have I got? I’m going to keep going and uh try and get a few more kilometers under my belt before swapping this bike over. So mate, what’s the best way to get around the river on a bike? Uh going towards like the city? Yeah, I’m heading heading to the city. Yeah, go past the park and then a further road. That’s you guys. Awesome. Thanks for your help. Aha. So we’ve been 40 just over 40 minutes on bike number one. Let’s find bike number two. Oo, can I use it for electric? No. Good news and bad news. Good news. The new bike has got a kickstand. Bad news. I don’t think I can get electric bikes on the day pass that I’ve booked, which will be annoying. Not now, but definitely later in the day. That’ll be annoying. My first set of big traffic lights. Easy. Hey, and we found the river temps. Again, there’s of course a big why to this whole thing. I mean, why am I doing this ridiculous thing of picking up bikes and riding across London? Kind of the main reason is I had a spare day here in London. I knew the weather was quite nice and I wanted to do something a little bit different. I just wanted to do something fun. I used to live here. This was my old hometown up until the age of 25. And I don’t often get to look around it as a tourist as well. I’m normally here either for work or to see friends and family. So to be able to see it on a bike I thought was a pretty fun way to um reconnect with the city one more time. I’m also a rather planned and structured person. I generally especially when I’m traveling I I tend to like to know what I’m doing in the morning and the afternoons and when I’m going places like from one end of a city to another I generally like to have a bit of a plan. But today I made a real point of not planning this video at all. Like I know exactly where I’m picking the bike up from in the first first scene when we’re in Raven’s Court Park. And I know where I’m heading to, but in between there, I have no idea where to go, as you’ve probably seen so far, which streets, which turnings, and I like that. It’s nice to be a little bit spontaneous sometimes, and not plan. There is a third reason, which is I’m running the Melbourne Marathon in a month’s time from now. So, I also thought a bit of cardio wouldn’t hurt. Wrong way. There’s no path at all alongside the river here now. So, you know, I’m being a little bit braver. I’m in the main streets, but I’ve got to say it’s pretty good. Just my experience so far is there’s there seems to be a fair bit of respect for cyclists here. Everyone’s given me enough space. No one’s been particularly aggressive towards me. It might not be everyone’s experience of riding in London, but so far so good. [Music] So, we got these blue cycle paths now along this main road along the side of the temps, which is completely separated from the rest of the main traffic. It’s really wide as well, which is great. It’s called CS8, which I’m sure is like cycling superighway number eight. Making good speed as well. That’s 1 hour 16 so far into the trip. I’m going to need a fuel stop at some point. [Applause] [Music] Even though I hadn’t planned this route, there are certain way points and landmarks along the way that I kind of knew I probably would pass at some point. That’s one of them. Holy moly, so many people here. Wow. I was legit going to stop here at the Houses of Parliament and have a bit of a snack and a drink, but I think I might keep going. I’m not very good in big big crowds of people, and this is a big big crowd of people. I think I might take this opportunity actually to cross over the river now from the north side that we’ve been on all the way up until now across the south. I’m doing that for two reasons. One, it’ll be a nice change. Get to see another part of the city. And two, because I’m just stuck in this lane, and I don’t think I can cross that traffic. So, I’m committed now. [Music] Scotland. It get so busy there on Westminster Bridge. Everybody wants to get that classic picture of that. To be to be fair, I’ve done that in the past as well. So, it’s fine. But, all right, let’s get off the busy roads. I also need to swap this bike over because it’s almost an hour that we’ve had this one. And I figure I might have a quick stop for myself as well, just to I’m a bit hungry and a bit thirsty, so just to take on some calories. And handily, I think there might be one or two spare bikes here. [Music] 1 and 1/2 hours so far. That’s not bad at all. Just going to pause the watch now, take a quick like 10-minute breather, have a drink, have some food, and then get back on the bike from the same spot. So, we make sure that we continue the loop. Hi, how are you? Could I just get a vegan tofu wrap, please? Thank you. Yeah, that’s not what I want. I absolutely inhaled that Malaysian vegan tofu wrap that the lady gave me. And then as I was checking Windy, I noticed that there was a storm cell coming through. And just as I’d finished my lunch, the heavens opened and a shower started. So, now I’m walking to the cycle rack to pick up a cycle and start this next phase of the cycle ride, which I think is going to be a bit wet. Don’t let the uh blue sky behind me deceive you. There’s more coming. Okay, here we go again. Now, making our way around the southern side of the main city of London. [Music] [Music] I made a bit of a wrong turn there. Ended up in London Bridge Station. I want to keep going along the south side of the temps, but if I go any closer to the temps, I’m going to actually end up crossing the bridge. So, I think I’m going to turn left and sort of head away from the river. The river’s over that side behind me, but I’m going to go this way and head down away from the river to see if I can find a turn up to parallel the river. But that does mean I could jeopardize my distance from the temp’s target green light. But let’s see how we go. Oh, this is an 03 road as well. Do I claim ignorance? No. Oh, there’s police down there as well. Let me turn around and see. You can see all the wrong turns I was making around the London Bridge area here. But what concerned me more was that I was already almost 300 m away from the tempames at this point. And I couldn’t conceivably think of a way of getting back to the temps without first of all heading further south. I think this is Guys Hospital. Yeah, this is proving to be the hardest part of the trip so far. I think this is wrong as well. But I didn’t want to just lean on Google Maps to sort the problem out for me. So, I stuck to my plan. I am so lost right now. I tried to see if I could somehow work my way back towards the temps again. All right, I’ve left the hospital behind me and managed to find some cycle lanes that are kind of heading in the right direction. I think I’m not sure how far from the river I am. I know it’s over to my left at the moment, but how far I am from it. These look like old buildings from the docks when they used to be operational docks down here in London. All converted now. It’s very nice apartments, but it does make me think where there are docks, there has to be a river. So, surely we’re close. Yes, that’s another one of those landmarks that I knew we’d pass at some point. Tower Bridge really does denote the part of the edge of the main city of London now. And so the sort of third part of our mission is to continue going along the tempames round into Docklands. And our easternmost cycling dock that we need to take the bike back to or the next bike cuz we’ll still have to pick one more up is somewhere over there. Not going to lie to you, I did spend the last 15 minutes when we were back there at Tower Bridge shooting a couple of thumbnails for this video as well. And whilst I was doing that, I realized that I’m actually running out of time on this bike for our 60 minute 60-minute limit on each bike. So, the next bike dock we find, I’m going to need to swap this one over. Only problem is I don’t know where the next bike dock is, and we’re sort of heading more and more out of town, and I can only imagine they’re getting a bit more limited in supply. There is one bike rack nearby, but it doesn’t have any bikes on it. So, there’s one here which has seven, but it’s a bit further away. Means a bit of a detour. It’s a bit further away, but I think I’m going to have to go to that one. What’s that? Canada water. [Music] City bike number four. And it’s raining. Oh no. Yuck. I’ve realized one thing that I think I’ve miscalculated. I got to stop. As I just sheltered from the rain under this tree, I’ve just realized something and that I’m on the south side of the river and my final destination is on the north side of the river and the last bridge across the river from my limited knowledge of what I remember of London is Tower Bridge, which we passed quite a while ago now. So, how I’m going to get from the south side of the river to the north side right now is still an unknown. But in good news, it has just stopped raining. Yeah. You see, I am here on the south of the temps and my destination is it’s still further around the temps, but it’s over there on the north side and the last bridge is Tower Bridge all the way down there. And I legitimately have no idea how I’m going to get across. I don’t really know what to do actually. Do I go back to Tower Bridge or do I keep going? Being unplanned is great in many ways, except when you need a plan. Four bicycles, several hours, and a lot of kilometers into this challenge. I’ll admit, at this point, I was starting to get a little bit tired. Unbeknownst to me, as well, at this point, I’d already broken one of my three rules, which I wouldn’t find out until the end of this challenge. And worse still, I was about to break another one. However, I was genuinely really enjoying the cycling around my old hometown of London. I love these super highways. And I was excited that I was about to come into a part of London that I used to love visiting when I was a kid. I can see Greenwich and I’ve got an idea about crossing the river. [Music] The Cyak reminds me of two things. It’s one being a kid and coming down to Greenwich here with my family. And the second thing is of course the London Marathon that loops around here. It also reminded me in Greenwich there is a quick way to get across to the other side of the river. I’m not sure if I can do that with a bicycle, but I’m about to find out. And if I can, the finish line’s in sight. [Music] There’s a foot tunnel. Foot tunnel over there. Yep. Similar. There’s one after this building. You can go down and I can go down and walk across. Amazing. Thank you very much. H So my plan was come to Greenwich, walk through the tunnel with the bike and cycle it to the finish line, which I can almost see across the other side of the river. That would have been easy. Uh the lift that goes down quite a long way is fine. It’s working on this side, but on the other side of the river, it’s not working. So, do I risk carrying the bike up the stairs on the other end? Probably not. It’s going to be an absolute calamity, and people will be trying to get on down. It’s probably not very safe either. So, I thought, well, why not drop this bike off on this side, walk across, pick up another bike on the other side. Only problem is when I’m looking at the map for where the nearest cycle drop off is to where I am right now here on the south side of the river, it’s the same places where I picked this bike up from like half an hour ago. So, two choices. Do I risk walking the bike up the stairs on the other side, or do I take it all the way back to where I picked it up from, cross the river somewhere over there, and then finish the rest of this on the northern side? [Music] I’ve come up with a plan C, and that is I’m going to get the ferry across. Even though it doesn’t go directly across just to the other side where I want it to go, it actually goes quite a bit back up the river. I’m going to do that, get the ferry across and then cycle the rest of it on the northern side. So, I’m retracing my steps a little bit on the other side of the river, but at least it gets me across to the north. Couple of things I didn’t take into consideration with this new ferry plan of mine. First of all, was how long it would actually take to wait for this ferry to turn up. Secondly was whether I could actually take this bike on the ferry at all. Now, they did ask me about this when I was getting on board. She saw you. Yeah, she said she said, “Yeah, I’m just going across the first.” Thank you. Yeah, but ultimately they were really good about it. They let me go on board the ferry with my bike. But as I sat down, that’s when I realized what this actually meant for the whole mission. The only thing I realized was I had to wait for this ferry for 25 minutes. On the ticket shows me I got this bike at 2:26. It’s currently 3:30. So I’m going to have it for more than an hour. Happy night. North side. Woo! And I’m on the north side of the temps, right? Oh, and look at that. We need to pick up one more bike for the final part of this trip and uh go find the most easterly Santander cycle drop off. All right, that’s bike number four dropped off. We just need to pick up bike number five and then finish our trip to go over to East India Docks, which is I’m not sure how far actually. Somewhere in that direction. Not too far. And for the last part of this journey, we’ve also got the best bike out of all of them. A shiny. It looks brand new. Tires inflated. No squeaking, no dinging bell. Fantastic cycle to finish it off with. Bye, Greenwich. O2 big arena here in Sydney. It’s not in Sydney. I’m so tired. [Music] I think this is it. I think we’re here. I think this is it. This is the point I needed to come to. Where’s the bike rack? is there. [Music] We did it, guys. Just over 35 km, 4 and a bit hours, five bicycles, one ferry, and a couple of rain showers later. We’re here in the most easterly drop off point for the public cycles here in London, East India in Dockland. What an adventure. An adventure may be, but how accurately did I actually stick to those rules that I set myself? Well, in terms of using only Santanda bikes, well, yeah, huge tick. Little bit fiddly with the credit card at one point, but once I’d worked out the payment system, actually really easy to use the day pass system to cycle across London. Rule number two, I give myself 80% on that because for four out of the five bikes, I did have them for less than 60 minutes. In total, I was charged £350 for that daily bike hire, but then I did get an additional £330 charge for the overuse. But all in all, and for the amount of cycling I did today, I still think that’s actually pretty reasonable. And what about our third rule of not being more than 500 m away from the temps? Well, even though I did actually break that rule on two occasions, it wasn’t by a lot more than 500 m. And forcing myself to be a little bit creative and trying to stick to the temps without using Google Maps at all on this whole trip meant that even though I did technically break that rule, I still got to spend a fun day in a city I really love very much. Now I’ve just got to work out how to get back to my hotel which is in Paddington. I’m not cycling.