Big City Adventures of Me and My Bike.

I was in London with my mountain bike last weekend. My bike and I were visiting my mate Steve for some good food, beer and possibly some cycling.

We met up with Allen and Deirdre on Friday after work as Deirdre now works for the same company that Steve does. Steve gave us a quick tour of some of the BBC Television centre before going for beers. Unfortunately I had to leave my trusty bike in the BBC bike shed, as it wasn't allowed past security into the building.

This is the BBC News 24 set in the background and they were actually on air while we were watching. It was almost exciting to see the actual set and the news being read out while we were only a few yards away. One thing that was strange was how open the set was and how close the office desks were to the sets. Just to the right of this picture was where the news was collected from various sources for the program.

Any of us could have just run onto the set and for a few seconds been on live TV across Great Britain. Fortunately for Steve we all were well behaved.

We also saw the Blue Peter Gardens just outside of the infamous BBC canteen. It's a lot smaller in real life and just to the right of this photo is the not so pretty side of the BBC building.

Allen really wanted to eat at the BBC canteen so we had Friday dinner there. We were all unanimous that the canteen deserved its reputation for poor quality food. I had some beef chilli and chips, while the chilli wasn't too bad the chips had obviously been out for most of the day under a hot lamp. Poor Deirdre's cheese and onion pastie was just as dry and too hard for her to eat all of it. Allen had a burger that looked like it had had all the moisture removed from it before cooking!

I think that Steve had the safest choice of a baked potato and salad. Here you can see Deirdre and Allen after their sumptuous BBC meal in the canteen. I think Allen's smile is a little forced or maybe he was just happy to have survived the food. Well I think we all deserve Blue Peter badges for being so brave and eating the food.

After all this excitement we went to the BBC bar for some well deserved beers. There was some sort of birthday party on in the bar as there was a group of the BBC news crew getting quite drunk and raucous. They were mostly women and for some reason they had a giant six foot tall inflatable dick which was passed around the dance improvised dance floor! Unfortunately I didn't recognise any of them as actual TV news readers so didn't get a decent shot of anyone who's been on TV with a six foot willy.

We also got to see the Tardis, well one set version of it anyhow. To be honest it's not as big as you might think on the inside.

My poor bike ended up spending the rest of the weekend in the BBC bike shed. It told me that it didn't mind too much and had a good time chatting to all the local bikes. I kept it well chained up so it couldn't run off with any of them.

The rest of the weekend was either spend in a pub or a restaurant or both. It rained for just about all weekend so we didn't do that much except for eat and drink. So much for the great British summer!

My bike and I eventually came back home on Sunday evening, and even if I didn't get to use it, it was fun to get out and about in London with it. :)