New girl on the block!

Bonjourno fellow cyclists!

I’m not sure of forum etiquette but I didn’t want to start posting without introducing myself first.

So I’m Kirsty – I work in TV, I’m northern and fairly recent to London but a resident long enough to start saying words like glass, laugh, and even ‘nice’ yesterday like a southerner (a year and a half).

A keen cyclist in the north but I was majorly intimidated by all the horror stories about cycling in London so I haven’t got on a bike in the whole time I’ve been in the capital… Until now, I brought my bike down as of this Christmas and hope to get back on the horse for commuting and fun-times ASAP.

To cut a not very long story even shorter, as soon as I mentioned cycling people started telling me to sign up here so that’s my story.

Happy new year, 8 days late.

if you are anxious about cycling in london, you can get free or subsidised cycle training

https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/cycling/cycling-in-london/cycle-training#on-this-page-1

Hello @DoubleK welcome to the forum.

A good start would be going to your closest forum drinks and meet up with the people there. We are colourful bunch of riders/racers and always willing to help or go for social rides to get your confident on the busy streets of London roads.

Welcome, we'll be drinking soon...
http://www.lfgss.com/conversations/238408/?offset=700#comment12716806

Welcome to the friendliest cycle forum :)
Do you wear Rapha?

Comes from the north it will be a gabba !

@DoubleK welcome to the forum, you'll find top people and tips on here. Good luck with getting out on your bike and look out for forum drinks and socials.

Al

As everyone here says, welcome! We're a friendly enough collection of people with at least one or two common interests.

As long as you avoid the forum sex pests you'll be fine.

Welcome to the friendliest forum on the internet.

Just to echo @dancing james 's sentiments, cycle training is freely available from your local authority and is most likely free of charge.

Boris wants you to cycle safely, confidently and properly, so he pays us instructors rather well pro rata to help you do that.

He also wants his air quality figures to improve and his public transport system under less stress, so it's not exactly out of the kindness of his heart.

If there's any more you'd like to know about it, see its forum page here:

https://www.lfgss.com/microcosms/539/

And what cycle training covers here:

https://www.lfgss.com/comments/7319903/

Thanks for the warm welcome folks! I'll definitely keep my ear to the ground for drinks - I live in East London and work on Southbank so I'm spread fairly thinly across London, which hopefully means more drinks for me :)

You will be happy to know I've managed a couple of trips out on the bike this week and last weekend, London wasn't as scary as I first thought!

London's fine and dandy.

Enjoy!

Where in East? Southbank is comfortably close to a bunch of places.

The very lovely Stratford, for all my sins!

East is East!

East is where all the cool kids hangs out (or in my case far east). Cycle safe!

Did somebody mention my name?

I'm from up north and ride regularly in London, the other road users are actually less scary than home. It's the air that'll kill ya.