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This was completing the hat-trick of the Bike Events London-to-X rides, having previously done the London to Brighton (many times) and London to Southend (twice). It was a busy time for me, so I didn't have time for a full write-up, this is just a very brief one. I again posted it as a London Cycling Meetup ride, with 9 people originally signing up and 6 making it on the day. It took two trains to get me to the start. Given Sunday services, this meant getting up at a rather frightening 5.30am! I met Emily at Liverpool Street and we got on the train early enough to grab space for our bikes - something not everyone managed, at least one of our group, Cathy, being directed onto a different train going to a different station! The ride started at Picket's Lock, with around 4000 people taking part. |
Five of us had arrived by the 9am start-time, so we set off then. One lesson I have learned with these rides is you announce a start-time and then stick to it! Anyone who isn't there by the time we leave won't be short of company on a ride with 4000 people. I've got a very good system for keeping the group together on normal rides, but this isn't practical on a mass ride. I'd thought it would be easy enough keeping such a small group together, but there was a fair variation in pace, and some were more sociable than others in their approach to the ride, so I think a different approach is needed for future rides of this type. But the beauty of a ride like this is that you're never short of company, so hopefully everyone found people to ride with, or at least enjoyed chatting to different people along the way. One thing Bike Events can be counted on for is good routes. The roads were mostly quiet and scenic. |
Quite a few cycle clubs do these rides together. |
And there are always some unusual machines to be seen! |
Though I think they thought my bike was more eccentric than theirs. :-) We were luckier with the wind that we had been on the Southend ride, with mostly tailwinds blowing us along. The weather in general was excellent: a mix of sun and overcast-but-dry, with only one short rain-shower. There were a few short, sharp hills along the way, but most of it was lovely rolling countryside, essentially paralleling the M11 to the east, before crossing it at Duxford. |
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The Bike Events commentator is well-informed about TRICEs, always telling the crowd a little about them. This time, he conducted a little impromptu interview with me at the finish line. I really must claim some sales commission from ICE! Ice-cream was duly consumed at the end. Most of the group caught the Bike Events coaches home (bikes going in an accompanying truck), while I was spending the night with friends who live about 8 miles north of Cambridge - or 14 miles if you mistakenly leave your GPS set to Bicycle routing after last using it in that mode to avoid being routed up a motorway ... So by the time I arrived there, it was a 77-mile day all-in. I was pleased by this, though: the last time I did a ride of that sort of length (72 miles on one of my LEJOG days), I was completely worn-out. This time (admittedly on less hilly terrain), I felt like I had something left. I decided to schedule that attempt at a 100-mile day I've been promising myself. It was pouring with rain when I set off the following morning, but good waterproofs meant a dry and uneventful ride back to Cambridge station and then a couple of trains home. If you'd like to ride the route yourself, you can download the tracklog below. If you have a Garmin GPS with Mapsource, then the .gdb file is the one you want; for anything else, the .gpx file is the universal exchange format so any GPS worth its salt should be able to read that. |