Today saw me taking the Le Shuttle trip with the bike through the EuroTunnel.
I was booked for the 14:50 train, and I read that you should show up at least an hour beforehand for customs, etc. I was a bit earlier than that, showing up at 13:05 or so. As you approach the EuroTunnel booths, you're given an option of self-serve (if you have a reservation) and staffed booths (half marked with british flags and right-hand-drive oriented, half not.) I had a reservation, but I really felt like talking to a human, so I picked a staffed booth.
The girl was a bit surprised that I already had a reservation, but she was cheerful enough about it, asked for the credit card the reservation was made with, and offered to bump it up to the earlier 13:50 train for me.
French customs was almost a non-event. They took my passport, glanced in its general direction, then handed it back with a smile. I can't be sure they even opened it. I know for sure the 4 UK passports that were handed over by the van before me were waved off once the guy verified they were all the same colour from a distance.
The UK customs officer was quite friendly. Asked lots of questions, demonstrated that he had a personality, and was pretty conversational while getting the details he needed. There was none of the sense of threat I often feel when crossing the US/Canada border.
Off-topic, but I wonder if I can order the Ford Focus UK bumpers for delivery in Canada. They're so much nicer. Anyway.
The EuroTunnel train is basically a very long empty tube. About every other car has a large side door, so you can just drive in and down its length as far as you can. They only require you to engage your parking brake and put the vehicle in 1st; no tiedowns required. A few minutes later, they closed the external and internal doors between the rail cars and we were off.
The transit was about 30 minutes. Surprisingly, I had a very strong Orange France 3G signal all they way across until the train exited the tube in the UK.
While I was in the tube, I looked up the O2 store address in Folkestone UK, and bee-lined there as soon as they let me off the train. Picked up SIMs for both the iPhone and iPad. They enabled my iPhone account immediately, and sent me off to do my own iPad registration.
As a note, being left to do your own iPad registration while in a foreign country is a non-starter; a fact I forgot about until trying to do my registration. To complete it, you require a credit card, and you have to enter the local country's address that is registered to that credit card. They check the zip/postal/post code against the card registrar's database. If you're a foreigner, you're SOL. Best solution there is to get some form of pre-paid credit card that lets you configure your own address online. I have to admit, once you do get online, you feel like you just slayed a dragon.
As many are aware, the UK follows left-hand traffic, opposite most of the world as the wiki shows. They've got a pretty good system as you come out the UK side of the EuroTunnel; you are essentially dropped into the left-hand lane, with a big sign reminding you about left-hand traffic in the UK. I was always afraid of how my instincts would tolerate being shaken up by this, but so far, it has been okay.
Next was the 250km transit to Alyesbury, with a half-pass of the "London Orbital", the M25. My GPS was having fits as it got traffic updates; most highways on the far side of London towards Heathrow were really congested, or "severe" as my GPS says. For a while, it had me doing 5000 roundabouts through subdivisions before it finally ran out and only had the M25 to feed me.
I also found at one point that I had to kill my audiobook. I noticed I had started being "surprised" at left-hand traffic decisions and realized I needed to concentrate more.
I will also say that perhaps due to the higher traffic volumes here than I've seen since I landed last week, people really weren't dealing with the roundabouts very well here. Lots of people were stopping before entering, and judging by the levels of aggression by people in the roundabout (speed primarily), I can't blame them. I rarely ever saw people have to stop before entering in the smaller cities and towns I'd seen in Germany, Switzerland, and France, but I also haven't seen a city over here with even a fraction of London's population yet.
Once I got back on the M25, I took my hand at lane splitting. Wooo! Admittedly, my bike is a bit wide with its side boxes on, but people were opening up the right split (between the fast and second-fast lanes) for me readily enough.
After getting to the hotel, I set about trying to sort out the mess with getting my iPad on O2 here, and hit the pub next door. Bangers, mashed, and a Guinness; aww yeah. And now that I know that many UK pubs don't serve you at the table, that went a bit better for me this time around too.
Called Misha in London. Hopefully I'll get to visit him while I'm over this weekend. If not, I'll likely be back here before the end of this trip. He lives in the northern part of London, and figures as long as I avoid the core, I shouldn't run into too much Olympics insanity.
Tomorrow will be an early start. Breakfast at 08:00, then I want to drop my clothes at a nearby laundrette when it opens at 08:30, then zoom off to the ride for its 09:00 start. Har. I have lofty goals!
I should also comment on work. I have been keeping sporadic touch with my work mailbox. Thus far, things are either going well, or noone is bothering me with escalations. After a week away, I can't believe how remote work feels. I feel like I've experienced a month's worth of stuff in the past 7 days. And I have, what, 42 more days to go? Not that I'm counting at all; I'm really not. But the scale of the past 7 days did need some perspective of what I've got ahead of me.
Premium (95 RON), prices in England appear to be about GBP 1.35/L, or CAD $2.12/L.
Averaging 5.9 L/100km today, on roughly 120km/h roads
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