help!

The time has come for the fourth annual bi-hemispherical dash, and I’m looking for some help with a particularly troublesome luggage issue. I want to bring my mountain bike back from Wellington to Edinburgh, and I’m not quite sure how to go about it. If you have any ideas of experience of travelling with large luggage, please read on and see if you can help…

It seems that the vast majority of the 12,000 miles home will be pretty easy. I think I can get to the airport okay, and as long as I only have two pieces of luggage I can count the boxed bike as one of them, and get it to London comparatively easily. The last 400 miles are the problem.

I figured if I turned up to board an internal flight from Heathrow to Edinburgh with a US-sized luggage allowance, the nice people on the checkin desk would smile politely and then ask me for a couple of hundred pounds for the excess baggage. For this reason, I have decided to make the London-Edinburgh journey on the train.

So, the problem is this. I have to get from Heathrow to Kings Cross, then up to Edinburgh, then from Waverly station to Marchmont, with one large bag and one large and suspiciously bike-shaped box, but without causing myself lasting physical or psychological damage. Comedic possibilities notwithstanding, cycling between stations with 35Kg of luggage on my back is not an option.

So, has anyone out there done something similar? Do GNER laugh in the face of surfboards? Have you made it across London with that bubble-wrapped novelty Alpine Horn you mistakenly bought on holiday in Corsica? Can you get in a black cab with a bikeinabox? Have I completely underestimated how much pain this is going to cause, and should I just bit the pillow and dump my 700 dollar bike in Cash Convertors for 50 bucks? Inspiring comments or emails would be gratefully recieved, and will probably earn the sender a slap-up grubfest (including beverages of choice of course - desserts are extra, despite being ‘stressed’ spelt backwards).

Anj