'Hear about this event - Central London

[yenrod]

Ride with the Olympic Superstars.



http://www.london.gov.uk/freewheel/

 

[Aperitif]

Coming?

 

[Arch]

Why ?

We'd be there, if we weren't in France!

Hope it's a nice day for it - I know a lot of forummers are planning to be there...

 

[JamesAC]

Coming?

Been!

Utterly crazy event. It started off in a fairly organized sort of way, with a led ride from Ilford to Victoria Park (one of the "hubs"). Marshals and so on. Bit of a mix-up with the free hi-viz jackets: there were about 70 orange "Marshal" jackets, and six yellow plain. So most of us wore the orange jackets inside-out, and the marshals wore the yellow!. We proceeded to annoy a lot of motorists as we trundled down through Ilford, Forest Gate and Stratford to Victoria Park. There it all began to fall apart a bit as cyclists from various other outposts got mixed up with each other, and instead of a nice tidy bundle of Ilford cyclists, there was a long straggle of allsorts.

The route was well marshalled, and we soon arrived, in brilliant sunshine, at Tower Hill, one of the access points. And what a sight!! There were MILLIONS of cyclists. Young ones pedalling along on their pink glittery bikes; very young ones in tow-along things; two gents on penny farthings with top hats; a woman cycling along with a sound system in her basket playing opera kareoke - and she was singing along with a most amazing soprano voice. There were old gits (me) and young things. There were unicycles and recumbents. There were trikes and tandems. A guy towing a huge sound system playing "I want to ride my bike" (Queen). The Queen wasn't in, by the way!

I did one circuit from Tower Hill to Buckingham Palace and back, with not a car in sight. Then plunged back into London's Sunday afternoon traffic for the ride home - somewhat faster than the ride in!

Brilliant. I'll do it again next year!!