Day 5: We make it to London! Avenue Verte completed!

After riding more than 220 miles on our bicycles from Paris, we are at the London Eye.

Success!

Sadly we can’t find a marker to celebrate the end of the Avenue Verte bicycle route between Paris and London, just a mob of people lining up for their turn on the big wheel on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

But all the steep climbs and other challenges of the past five days fade as we savor our accomplishment. High five!

Looking back on Day 5

We stood atop the Farthing Downs, a nature spot at the tip of England’s North Downs and just inside the M25, the highway ring road around London. Way off in the distance we can see the skyline of both the City of London and Canary Wharf, London’s two financial districts.

Behind us are nearly 19 miles from our hotel in Crawley and two steep climbs. One topped out at 11%; yes, I decided I could walk a bit of that one.

We also cycled past Gatwick Airport. Impressive — the train station was on one side of us, an elevator just for bikes to a terminal was on the other. Could you bike to the airport, buy a box, pack up your bike and fly the same day?

Soon after, there’s the first real London-Paris sign we see in England. Oddly, there’s no mention of the Avenue Verte on it. For me, it’s another sign that the English don’t care as much about this route as the French do.

We also have more that 28.5 miles left before we reach the London Eye, but that’s a smaller matter.

National Cycle Network Route 21 peeled off from the Avenue Verte just outside the M25, shortly after Redhill. We switched there to NCN 20, which takes us up to the top of Farthing Downs.

Then it’s all downhill, first through an area that feels more rural than suburban, then affluent single-family suburbia. The weekend, the sunshine … by the time we reach Morden Hall Park, we are slowing down, if not walking our bikes around all the people.

We’re in parts of South London that are new to both of us. Carshalton. We skirt Wimbledon, nowhere near the famed tennis club. The Wandle Way path that follows the Wandle River. Earlsfield (goodbye NCN 20). Wandsworth Prison, built in the 1800s and still in use.

A nice slogan:

We stop in Clapham Common to chat with a couple of representatives from Walk Wheel Cycle Trust, the organization in charge of the National Cycle Network. We appreciate all they do — but we also suggest that Route 21 could use some attention.

After watching the miles count down on local cycleway signs, we’re finally along the Thames. We cross to the north side at Chelsea Bridge, getting a look at Battersea Power Station on the opposite side, then pedal past Tate Britain. We enjoy a small stretch of one of London’s Cycle Superhighways along the river (a small deviation from the Avenue Verte route), then it’s back to the south side of the river at Lambeth Bridge, before we can reach Big Ben and Parliament.

Another mile and we are at the London Eye.

37 miles. Hills? What hills? I can barely remember them.

Oh, we still have another 5 miles or so to reach a friend’s house. Back on the bike. Thank you, London, for this view from Waterloo Bridge and the cycle routes that get us most of the way there.

If you’ve missed the entire journey, here are the trip reports for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4.