Stratford Cycling Club: Fill & Download for Free

I love London with a passion. It’s my home every crazy inch of it, and after travelling to many different places and experiencing living for prolonged periods of time, experiencing other cultures, there's nowhere that quite compares to London.It’s like a tonic. Walking around the streets is literally , if you let it be, revitalising. That might sound odd, but London is so unique and literally has everything. History, culture, heritage, beautiful parks everywhere, theatres, clubs, art galleries, roller discos, ice skating, varied and interesting cuisine.You can literally walk into a thrift shop and buy a genuine Katy Spade , DKNY, Gucci ,Dolce and Gabana out fit complete with accessories for under £30-£50 or way less. Example Fara Charity shop N1. If that is what takes your fancy.Or go to Trafalgar Sq and visit all the art galleries for free. Or a day in Kensington visiting museums for, you guessed it free. Fancy exercising? Capoeira in Stratford Queen Elizabeth park on a Tuesday evening….free!!!Or Yoga, Boot Camp in Regent Park. Add ‘'Dealzippy ‘to the scenario and what you want to do or buy in London for next to nothing, it's possible.Kids with you for the Summer holidays? No problem they can spend their days in amazing, supervised adventure playgrounds with LOADS on in places like Exmouth Market park for FREE!!!If you WANT to spend money you can no problem but if you don't you can still do everything. It's easy to walk ANYWHERE once you know your way, and if you don't mind using your legs OR great cycling lanes.There are fabulous schools in London. Amazing hospitals with caring, hard working staff even with all the cuts and strains imposed by this government, still the quality is second to none.You want to go to Paris for lunch? Hop on the Euro at Kings Cross, 3 hours you'll be there.People are friendly and willing to help. Of course there's rude people like everywhere, but Londoners have a code. They will strike up a convo, and we do stick together and get on with it.I remember after the terrorist attacks in 2005, hordes of Londoners took it in their stride walking home with a comradeship.London has changed like everywhere with the regeneration,and the fact it is very overcrowded here now. Everyone wanting their piece of gold and of course the ludicrous, obscene property prices. I mean that's a definite downer and sad factor which is already having a detrimental affect on the essence of London. As far as ‘culing’ a large section of the community, I'm sure we'll see the devastating effect on the balance in society sooner rather then later. Unfortunately that's a global phenomenem.All that aside. London is exhausting but so energising and alive. Why would I want to be anywhere else?

It depends entirely on the person.First off, if you are an 'Americans are a superior race' type, no, do not come, we do not need your kind emigrating. I am not saying you are, but it would be my first red line for any Americans looking to live in the Uk.Second, accept that the Uk is the size of an average US state, not the size of the US. We are not 3000 miles across with 500 million, we are 300 miles or less across and we have 60 million folks here. So we see the world differently.Thirdly, even if our politicians often kiss Washington's ass, normal Brits do not bow down before Americans. We thought you were a bit late arriving for WWI and WWII, were hacked off you tried to overthrow our elected PM for telling you to enjoy Vietnam alone and even more hacked off when that twat Blair kissed Dubya's ass over Iraq…so do not come over here to tell us how we ought to run our country, ok?If me saying that to you is not a problem, then here is the reality of London:It is a global village. People from all over live here: those from the EU, the British Commonwealth nations and many more now live here. No bible bashing in public if you can avoid it. Just as many Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jews here as there are Christians. Best way to assimilate is to eat in restaurants of as many ethnicities as possible - pretty much all foods are available, so enjoy them!Property is very expensive, both to rent and buy. Property built much before 2000 may be suboptimally designed and may or may not have been retrofitted for energy efficiency. Buying property is a most undignified process of strong arm instant decision making: you snooze, you lose. In addition a lot of properties are not freehold, you may well have to pay tithes to the Duke of Westminster or another Noble Family. No chance of that changing short of a Revolution! For freeholds, buy further out and spend 3hrs a day on trains, tubes and/or buses.Accept we have different sporting histories: the English loved rugby, football (our football, not yours) and cricket originally. We have great traditions in athletics, equestrian sport of all kinds, rowing and sailing, have graced the world sometimes in tennis and have recently taken on the world at cycling. We have no traditions in ice hockey, little in basketball and absolutely none in either baseball or your kind of football. The US sees London as a cash till, so if you wish, you will be able to watch NFL and NBA live occasionally in London. London currently has 5 EPL teams (we do not call our clubs franchises, because our league was not founded by billionaire oligarchs handing out licenses to buddies) which you can watch if you so choose. Please call it football, not soccer if you engage with the locals.London is awash with classical music, opera, dance gigs and like all major cities whatever is attractive to the young in terms of pop music will be catered for. The same is true for theatre, be that comedy, farce or more serious things.It is also easy to get out of London for the weekend. Flights to Scotland and Europe are available, trains will get you around England, to Paris and Brussels and car hires will do the same. Unless you need a car for work, the economics suggest not bothering with owning one unless you live in the suburbs. Just remember London has five airports and 14 railway termini - railways were for Victorian entrepreneurs to build, so do not complain about the result: capitalism at work!If you like skiing, weekends or winter holidays to the Alps work fine. Surfing is Cornwall, but it is hardly Hawai'i. Bad luck!Within 100 miles, here is a list of places you could visit for one reason or another: Bath, Glastonbury, Isle of Wight, Brighton, Goodwood, Epsom, Ascot, Windsor, Oxford, Cambridge, Norfolk Broads, Cotswolds, loads of top golf courses, Wimbledon, Henley, Silverstone, Stratford. We pack a lot of variety into a small area……We do have 90F days some summers, in fact occasionally we have a block of them. But our climate is maritime and 70-75F is the average high in summer. We are most certainly not LA! Drive north of SF and our climate is closer to yours, but never the same….We do have snow in winter the odd year, but not enough to be worth storing thousands of snow clearing vehicles. We do not complain about US potholes, so you can keep schtumm about snow being left to melt sometimes….go to Moscow if you want lots of snow!We do not have a President, we have a Queen, who theoretically can rule over us all if she had a bout of nonagenarian megalomania. In fact, we have a Prime Minister who her majesty graciously allows to get on with the details of running the country somewhat incompetently. The current PM is a woman, the second female PM, so feminists can have few complaints about only men ruling the UK. At the moment……