ive been in the netherlands 1 week, yet im still covering my trip in england!!

continuing from where i left off. i left hamleys, then went back to the hostel to pick up my pannier and ate a little lunch, then headed to caroline's. when she messaged me the day before she told me she actually moved out of romsford to shenfield but that was closer to chelmsford so that made it better for me cause i wanted to visit there anyway. so i left london at 1:53 pm. i followed the thames until blackfriars bridge, but i was supposed to go under it and then turn off from there onto victoria road or something, but i didnt go under the bridge so i turned off onto street level and checked a map. seriously every street name was either victoria st or queen st, or queen victoria st! i got so confused looking at the map! but after asking someone i was on my way again and didnt get too lost passing through the city of london cause it was fairly recognizable. then i passed through east london and what a dump that place was! lots of old and run down looking buildings. they had a cycle superhighway though but even so i was competing with a bus for space. those red buses sure got on my nerves the whole week in london! but i eventually left the greater london area and came to a busy roundabout and so i checked the map to see where i needed to go, and i had gone way more north than i should have. my plan was to follow a quiet b road through romsford and ilford and the other villages inbetween london and chelmsford, but i was already way too north above that road (i had gotten lost in stratford which is just outside london..and yes, ANOTHER stratford!! how many places in england could have the same damn name, the country isnt that big!!) so instead of backtracking i just continued to the A12 and took that the whole way to shenfield. and of course it got really busy with rush hour traffic. there was hardly any room for me, i had to use the shoulder lane but even that disappeared at some points. it got dark around the usual 4:45 pm ish, so i had to put my lights on. so i used the rubber band (i had found another one on the floor!) and attached the headlight but after a while it fell off and crashed onto the floor and broke. it was just cosmetic damage really cause the light was being a bit temperamental, but it still worked. so i just held the light in my hand as i had been doing. so the good thing about the a12 was it was straight forward and nicely paved (comparatively..to the b road i would have otherwise taken), so i was making good distance. i think i actually made it there faster going that way than if i did take the b roads cause no doubt i would have gotten lost going through those villages and on those roads. but it just sucked having big trucks blowing by me and making me sway, some got real close to me. and there was so much muck in my lane! and this was the first time on my trip that i actually had black snot!! the fumes were just awful. but i was sure glad to escape those red buses!  well i eventually made it to the shenfield area without incident and picked up some frozen pizza for dinner. caroline lived a bit out of the center, along a secluded road with fields across from her. quite a difference to what i had been riding on the past few hours! so i found her place, arrived at 6:06 pm. i rode 28.86 mi, max 22 mph, avg 8.1 mph. so she helped me put lance in the garage and then she tried to lift my pannier and said it was real heavy and im thinking to myself, its not THAT heavy but when we got in the house i saw she was preggers! and pretty busting too! so i thought oh ok that makes sense now. so we chatted for a bit, she said her and her husband never actually went on a long distance bicycle tour, just camped around on weekends and did day trips and stuff. and now they are about to have a kid so it doesnt look like they ever will get a chance any time soon. so she said she was envious of me, but i was brave to be doing it this time of year. i was thinking, come on lady it was practically spring in london!! then her husband came home and wow, was he gorgeous! so we all got talking and ate together, caroline had to go to a "team meeting" so she left soon after dinner. i finally showered and i sure needed it! i smelled really bad! and i weighed myself on their scale..44.85 kg. thats like 98.67 lb. so not good! but ive since been eating more and have put on weight. then i went downstairs and chatted more with geoff, i was so out of touch with the world, i didnt even know anything about the italian cruise ship that sank! so it was refreshing to watch the news again. then geoff was telling me about his job. he works at the O2 arena, but he works in the transportation department. he is in charge of making sure people take green transport to the arena! and he said the company he works for is actually american. so he said there is a bit of a clash cause the americans want to make money and the english want to promote eco friendly business and travel. i think i prefer the latter! so he said they run those water taxis to the arena, and there are only 2000 parking spots in the lot and the arena holds like 40000 people.  he has to keep tallies on which method of transportation people are going to the arena by, and he has to report it back to the council. if more are using green transport then thats good, they are keeping policy with the council. but if lots of people drive he gets in trouble, but he said no matter how much he raises the parking prices, people keep coming with cars. and i said its london, these people got money!!  some will pay no matter if its P100!! but i rested him assure that i would be biking to the O2 if i ever went back, and the one time i did go, i used the underground! oh and he used to ride the 18 miles from romsford to london to work actually on that scary a12, but now he takes the train cause its just too far. and ditto with caroline. so then he went to shower  and came back down in his bathrobe which sure was a tease! but i went to bed shortly after, even though i tried to stay up for caroline. i had a nice room with a big comfy bed so that was grand! wed jan 18: the next morning caroline had already gone to work and some contractor was there inspecting the attic when i got up. so i ate and packed quickly and then left the same time as  geoff. so i left at 9:12 am to go to chelmsford first, then to colchester.  i got on the a12 again and took it the whole way. but being that everyone was going into london at that time of the morning, it wasnt busy at all. i even got on a cycle path on the side, but the a12 kind of took a right turn and the path went straight so i didnt want to chance it, so i got off the path and had to cross over the lane to the left and continued on the main a12. then it shrunk down to 1 lane for a few miles and i had cars honking at me cause they could hardly pass around me. sorry buddy, what was i supposed to do!? i didnt build the damn lane so small! or your car too big! but it eventually turned into a dual carriageway again and i saw the cycle path again so i think i could have just taken it straight to avoid that single lane but what can you do. so i arrived at chelmsford at 10:16 am, did 9.86 mi. i went to the museum, probably called chelmsford museum cause it was the only one there was. so apparently chelmsford is famous for the invention of electricity! or something thereabouts. so i learnt all about the guy who invented it and the primitive forms of electricity and so on. there was a high school group that was supposed to be doing an assignment but instead were just loitering in the exhibits, so that was annoying. then there was a tudor exhibit which i went to briefly.  so after all that knowledge and excitement, i continued on my way to colchester. i left at 2:13 pm and didnt get that lost yippieee! i cant recall this journey at all to be honest (except seeing 3 dead hedgehogs on the side of the road all within a few meters of each other and i was thinking oh a group of them must live around here..well USED to live around there!), i just remember arriving when i said i was going to arrive, for once! and it was just about getting pitch black out. so i was staying at a couchsurfing host's place. his name is ahmed, he is from egypt, he is my age and studying at the uni of essex, doing a phd in some computer programming thing.  only he wasnt really interested in doing a phd (he just completed a masters at the same school) but his supervisor talked him into it so he hadnt actually started yet, he was just diddly dallying! so he actually did nothing with his life at the moment! but i arrived at 5:15 pm, did 34.86 mi, max 23.5 avg 9.5. we had texted the night before and he asked if there was anything i didnt eat and i said i was a veggie and then he asked what about shrimps and oysters, so clearly he had already purchased them, so i didnt want to be difficult so i just said that was fine. so when i arrived he was in the middle of cooking that dinner with pasta and veggies. the oysters were actually better than i thought!  but i unfortunately had some tummy issues that night and they were probably the culprit. but after dinner we chatted for about 4 hours. he was born and raised in cairo, but before he came to england he had been living at some place on the north coast. he didnt like cairo cause it was way too crowded.  and he said drinking isnt really a part of arabic culture so he doesnt drink when he is at home in cairo, but he smokes a lot of hookah, thats the thing to do. but when he is in [coast city] he drinks there cause he is among friends more than fam. then he showed me on youtube this video of a racist lady on the tube screaming at the black people telling them to go back to their own countries cause none of them are british. and one lady said i am british, and he said no youre not, youre black! and made this whole scene. it really was just awful to watch. and the worst thing about it was she had a little son on her lap! i really hope he doesnt grow up to be as cunty as his mom! ahmed told me she later got arrested, and i hope jailed for many years and her kid taken from her. so colchester had a very small city center and he lived right on high st, so that was convenient for me to go to the sites. but my god, even on a wed night there were people (aka students) screaming and being loud at all hours of the morning on the street.  so it took me a while to get to sleep, but when i did i was out like a lamp. thurs jan 19: so ahmed had said the night before that he would show me around, but when i woke up he wasnt awake so i just left to go exploring on my own. did some wandering (aka getting lost) around the center, then ended up at the castle at the end of high st. i stayed there the whole day! they had quite a lot to see, exhibit wise. the castle itself wasnt very big. it mainly focused on roman habitation and i learnt all about queen bodiceas revolt! thats what those dirty romans get for not keeping their promise to the indigenous tribes!  at 12 i did a tour of the underground tunnels. it was quite low down there, although i didnt have too much of an issue! so after the tour i went back to the exhibitions. it was going to close soon so i had to speed it up a bit, but i still went to the prison cell, and had to rush through the tudor exhibit (tudor got shafted again lol). i was the last one to leave and i could tell the workers were annoyed with me, cause i was the only one in there for like the last half hour, so im sure they wanted to close early, but they couldnt kick me out, but i overheard one guard say to another, yup, shes still here! but i made my way out with about 5 min to spare =) then i stopped by the tourist info office for any free walking tour brochures but there was nothing, so i just used the one on my phone even though the map kinda sucked. so then i went to Firstsite which is a contemporary art space. the first exhibit was of life size replica body parts of the statue of liberty, scattered across the floor! the artist is going to change it up every few weeks, to give us a feel what it was like to ship her over to the US from france. then another one was interesting, it was about the 6 degrees of separation, and it took old paintings and photos of kings and queens from early english history, and so say queen victoria (seated right) and prince albert (seated left) were in one photo together, then the photo to the left would be of prince albert and someone else (prince albert seated right) and then on the right side of the VNA photo there would one with vicky and someone else (vicky seated left). it sounds confusing but it really was just linking people up, starting from early royalty and working its way to locals in colchester! so the moral was that we are all connected and therefore the same! then another exhibit talked about the oyster fair that goes on every year and has been for centuries. i didnt know colchester was famous for their oysters, so i was sure glad i had tried them the night before! then i saw a few more artworks (andy warhol stuff too!) then left to go to sainsburys and picked up some food. there i met up with ahmed who was coming home from the gym, so we walked together to his place. then he showered and we went out to a noodle bar for dinner. we came back, chatted a bit he gave me a gift of a nice blue scarf from egypt!! i found out that he woke up at 3 pm, so no wonder he couldnt take me for a tour! but he had gone to bed at like 4-5 am ish just watching movies on his computer in his room all night long! then we watched a few episodes of friends and he showed me some photos of egypt and he googled one of a satellite image at night. the only lights were a few places on the coast, cairo, allll along the nile, and some scattered towns in the desert!! he also told me about the revolution that took place in egypt not too long ago. i learnt a lot about egypt actually! i hate to be ignorant but i never knew anything about their modern culture! so it was quite nice hearing about it. i told him i want to do animal advocacy and he said that would never fly in egypt. people simply dont care about environmental issues and animal welfare. and he said there is so much turmoil amongst people, that they are worried about human rights over animals. oh and he told me that they have pigeon farms, to eat them! i thought that was odd cause i pictured like a pigeon you see on the street. he then googled some african country (somalia?) to show me what life was like there, and the images all showed sick and starving children, poverty and warfare. it almost made me feel guilty about wanting to defend animals when there is still so much wrong with the human race in other countries, so i thought maybe at some point i can also campaign for better rights in less privileged countries! but after that i went to bed, and again had to deal with the classy essex crowd outside the window all night! ok this has been mega long, so ill have to continue tomorrow!