bikes and things

I’d had this idea in my head for a while now having seen it mentioned on LFGSS many years back. I’ve long since stopped posting on there but for some reason fancied giving it a go. The arrival of my geared bike back from the shop with a new lick of paint also meant I wanted to try a longer ride without being too far from a train ride back in case of the worst. The idea was to ride all of the bridges in London you could legally ride on a bike. Fortunately this ruled out the one over the M25. It also meant the millennium bridge was out but then I didn’t see that as a problem as I was more interested in the ones less ridden as it were.

I’d originally planned a route on Garmin Connect and suggested it to a few people although the ride never materialised. It’s tricky planning the route as you have to cross each bridge but then aim to get the nicest riding between each one – ie not ending up on a busy 3 lane main road. As it had originally been intended for meeting people from North London the start was a little odd. We rode down the old canal in Peckham and ‘the back way’ via a coffee shop in Bermondsey to Tower Bridge and then promptly turned round and rode back south, neatly avoiding the awful road by the Tower of London. Turning right onto London Bridge a little later put us back on the crappy road but we were soon off again and up over Southwark Bridge, one which I rarely ride over. This pattern continued although with less abortive u-turns.

After some faffing with cleats we got going properly. We ended up riding some bit of the Thames Path I hadn’t seen before as well as a great ride through Battersea park. We ended up on a few more rough patches which were a bit more CX than planned as well as a few trips up stairs with the bike shouldered, but it was all pretty good going really. The Hammersmith Bridge was one I hadn’t seen before and we stopped to admire it if a bit before riding over it. The other treat was riding the north bank of the river around Chiswick. I’d only ever glimpsed this from the madness that is the drive along the A4 by the Fuller’s Brewery to get to the M4 to the West Country, but there’s a lovely stretch of river and path here. We ended up on a footbridge at Putney with some incredible views over London with the hail that had briefly hit us earlier.

As I’d hastily planned the last few bits of the route on Garmin Connect I’d not really checked them all properly, including the section that had us going through the middle of Kew Gardens. The six foot wall kind of put a stop to this but we found our way around and back onto the route again skirting around Richmond, through Teddington and through Hampton Court. The tarmac was lovely on this bit. So smooth and fast! Back around the other side of the Thames and into Kingston which was horrid. Another trip over a bridge and a u-turn to say we’d done it and then up to Richmond park via a few wrong turns. We got there in the end and enjoyed a coffee at the stall at the top after the first hill. James was starting to run out of energy so we got some more food and limped round the other side of the park.

We then retraced some of our steps on the north of the river through Chiswick and Hammersmith before finding ourselves on a strangely diagonal route through Chelsea which seemed to cut through London in an odd manner. This would have taken us on a fast route up to Buckingham Palace but the Chlesea match was kicking out and the streets were mobbed. Fortunately they had won so they were all pretty friendly. We then stopped at the Rapha Cycle Club for coffee and lunch and James headed home and I went to work for a few hours, via Regents Park. All told it was about 105k so a fairly big day out although not at a fast pace due to lots of little twists and turns of the Thames Path. Still great to get some proper distance in and explore some new parts of London and oh so pleasant to be riding geared again! 100k isn’t too shabby for the first ride back.