Fisrt Day...

Well i'ts definitely been an interesting start to the trip. After a very uneventful plane ride (which is actually a good thing considering the amount of young children on board) We landed in Gatwick, just south of london in Sussex. Actually the only real interesting thing that happened was an elderly lady fell down a couple steps in the arrivals hall and myself and another fella helped her into a chair. Customs was great, baggage was great...until I opened my bike box.
At the Vancouver airport, my dad and I repacked the bike because the tyre had poked through, but when I got here the centre post of the tyre was gone altogether! So after a 16 pound taxi to the nearest bike shop in Crawley, I managed to get a new part for only 10 quid, as well as a spare. I'm glad I ended up there though, the staff was super awesome and basically cut my trip in half!
My original plan was to head from Gatwick straight to Dover on the east coast and grab a ferry over to Calais, but the chap at the counter says, "Why don't you go south to Brighton and Newhaven and take a ferry to Dieppe?"
So I did. And it was awesome.

The coolest thing I've found about England so far is there's a huge network of little footpaths and bike paths zigzagging all over the countryside, and they're all quite beautiful for the most part. Some are a little sketchy, I have to say Newhaven isn't my favorite place and can barely be called a bike route, but some are just stunning. My favorite was a little hole in a fence that led to a field of purple flowers as far as the eye can see.

So after a long windy bike ride and a bottle of Gatorade, I found myself in Brighton. Man, what a cool place, I wish I could stay longer! There's a big festival going on that I'm pretty sure was a large-scale Shakespeare hoedown, but what really got me was the beach and cliffs.

So that's pretty much it so far, now I'm just sitting in a grody ferry terminal waiting five hours for a ferry that will take me to France! No bother though, I needed the break and I got to write this post!