To commute or not to commute....

[shielsy]

£500 for the train ticket or take the bike? It's 60 miles each way from Milton Keynes to Chancery Lane, London. Bike is a CBR600f4.

[shielsy]

Well, my rail ticket expired yesterday and the weather man said it was going to be dry today. That coupled with the fact the train was over an hour late in last night meant that today I was riding in.

What started out a lovely ride, seeing the sunrise, enjoying myself soon turned into a wet, stty ride. Really didn't enjoy it once I hit the North Circular. To make matters worse the bike started making a weird rattle once it started getting hot in traffic. I was nearly run over twice on Kingsway and turned up to work slightly shaken and pretty wet, albeit relieved.

Suffice to say, I will be calling in to the train station on my way home to purchase Octobers ticket. I probably sound like a bit of a pussy, but at least I gave it a go.

[shielsy]

Tall_Paul said:

Just looked at the route and TBH that seems like a piss easy commute, you only actually have 8 miles of "London" after you come off the M1, that's 50 miles of motorway, even if it's at a standstill motorway filtering is dead easy - so most of the route is boring, with some nice filtering at the end to wake you up in time for work! Get some proper textiles, heated grips for winter etc and you'll be fine. Try it on a nice dry day, and that feeling of being able to jump on your bike and blast off home rather than sitting on a bug infested sweaty train is awesome.

I commute 20 miles each way in kent with a few miles filtering at each end (not london, but still busy traffic) and there's no way I'd choose the train if I was commuting into central London (40 miles ech way for me)

Indeed, the route looks fairly straightforward (and it is really). I think my displeasure was mainly down to it pissing it down and the bike sounding like it was going to implode. On the plus side it's dried up now so the journey home should be more enjoyable.