Riding from Barking to Tower Gateway using CS3

Yesterday myself and Sarah finally decided to go to Tower Gateway by using one of the Barclays Cycle Superhighways, which was the CS3 route starting at Barking and ending at Tower Gateway. Before deciding to go to Tower Gateway Sarah was still very unsure, and at the moment she is on a diet and wants to lose some weight, I advised her that doing this trip would be very beneficial to her goal of losing weight and I also told her she would be fine with me on those mean streets of London, well I am happy to say we did end up going there and coming back in one piece.

Before setting off earlier that morning I had eaten a bowl of porridge with some dried apricots, raisins and golden syrup which had filled me up for a while, Sarah that morning had a bowl of Strawberry oat cereal with a healthy Strawberry probiotic yoghurt mixed in with the oats. Those were our breakfasts that would set up us for the rest of the day, but before we left the house we also had a smoothie each which consisted of all the ingredients found in Smoothie of the day 1 plus one extra orange, and I had 2 tablespoons of Greek yoghurt in my smoothie which had made the smoothie much more creamy, if that is how you like smoothies I recommend you try it. Finally just before leaving we also packed some supplies for on the road which I carried in a backpack, supplies included an apple for each of us, 3 slices of plain Burgen soya and linseed bread, two handfuls of raisins in a sandwich bag, and a handful of apricots too.

It was now time to leave which is what we did and had to ride from near where Dagenham Heathway is to the start point of CS3 at Barking, at which point me and sarah took this photo together and here is another photo we took of the CS3 information point which indicted we would arrive at Tower Gateway in 55 minutes. That was not to happen as we some made some short stops on the route for Sarahs energy levels to get back up, and mine too, so our first stop was Canning Town Recreation Ground which is where we were to sit down for 10 minutes to rest and to eat our apples for an extra energy boost.

It was now not too long before we set off again, once we had rejoined CS3 we were faced with a nightmare, a school kids day out it seemed was taking place as it looked like half of a school had taken to the streets of Canning Town, on the pavement and on CS3 too, well after about a minutes worth of snail pace riding and manoeuvring we had finally passed the kids and the teachers and now we could finally pick up speed again but again it was not too long, about 5 minutes, before we had to slow down again, as there were road works and maintenance taking place around about here which was where we were meant to dismount  for a distance of about 100 yards, but that was not to happen, instead we took it easy around the obstacle course that was the maintenance works.

It was an easy route from now on until we got to Tower Gateway which was to be our finishing point, but while we were there, we decided we were not going to head straight back home so we went across the road to the Tower of London, but we only sat down on the steps far away from the tower, but that did not mean we did not get a good view, because we did, so we had a nice view looking at the Tower of London while sitting down on the steps eating our food supplies that we had packed earlier, we also had some tiny friends visit us who we shared some food with

Once we had finished sitting down on the steps for 25 minutes we got back up and headed towards CS3 to make our way home. We found coming back home a much easier journey than going there. I am guessing it was the 25 minute break and buffet of healthy food that helped us get home much quicker, it was just a shame about the maintenance works and dummies standing in the middle of the cycle lane

But eventually we had made it back home in one piece, we were very tired as this was Sarahs first time riding so far, and I had only done CS3 once before which was late last year, but surprisingly once we were back home it seemed that I was slightly more tired than Sarah was, I guess it was a battle of ages, Sarah being 21 and myself being the old dude at 26

Many photos from yesterday can be seen here and below, I hope you enjoyed reading about another one of our journeys