Playing Hyde and Seek

When the Marble Arches at Hyde Park becond to me as I ate my lunch across the street at a Pret A Manger, I was hopeful that I'd be able to find a Barclay's Bike rental within the park boundaries.  A London aquaintance tells me that they are called Boris' Bikes and my cousin Mike tells me that Boris is the mayor of London who promotes cycling.

Not far from the empty Speaker's Corner (speakers only speak on Sundays it seems) I spied the Bike London symbol which is cleverly designed to look like an underground transportation symbol.  After a bit of dicking around with the machine, out spat a ticket with a numerical code that I had 10 minutes to enter into the bike rack and select my chosen bike.

Hyde Park off season and in the middle of the week was the perfect place for me to ride.  There was no traffic congestion to fight and while I did have to ride on the left side of the bike path, there wasn't much if any other bike traffic.

Apparently, bikes have to give way to horses and it was a pleasure to pedal along a designated bike path that had a wide and groomed horse trail (at one point called Rotten Row) on one side and a paved path with nannies pushing prams on the other side.

Make way for horses!

Being the cheap guy that I am, I wanted to return the bike before the one hour was up which means my little biking excursion cost only one pound for registration and one pound for one hour's pleasure for a total of roughly 16 dollars or less than what entrance to Madame Tussaud's cost and half of what we spent on a "Jack the Ripper Tour" last night.