The day before our ride, Mal was very nervous. We’d been into the city, suffered London’s useless Saturday bike shop staff but at least managed to score a cheapish helmet that wasn’t totally fugly (?40 from ?50 because they had no box for it). Behold, the Giro Havoc:

Around 10.15am after some tyre-pumping and chain tensioning we left home and headed down to the Ealing Town Hall. The Ealing branch of the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) was marshalling a 8k/5mi ride to one of the feeder locations at Ravenscourt Park.

We were on his ‘n’ hers Raleighs, Mal following me down the road while I explained what I thought were useful riding tips. We’ve ridden together a few times but mostly along traffic-free canal paths. Cars scared her (probably my fault for coming home cursing their actions all the time!) but I tried to make her at ease by explaining we’d be in a group of about 300 riders from Ealing and then even more in town.

One of my legions of fans yelled a “whey-hey Merckx!!” as we passed him walking down Uxbridge Rd. 🙂

Ealing Town Hall was swarming with riders when we arrived! I had arranged to meet Graham there (I met him marshalling the Tour Prologue, he lives out in Uxbridge) but he was running late. I didn’t really want to our group to go from 300 to 3 for Mal’s sake, so Mal and I left when the main group did. The ride was very slow, stopping at times, but I’d already resigned myself to this so I wasn’t at all bothered. Graham ended up passing the Ealing group but waited for us and we met him half way to Ravenscourt Park.

At Ravenscourt Park the organisers had setup some stalls, selling food, giving away Red Bull, that kind of thing. There was a woman in a wedding dress!?! and a unicycle juggler or two.

The weather was fantastic! No, really, it was! Check the pics, that’s real sky! I had my bike checked over by the boys in blu.. um.. fluoro yellow..

Cheered through the start gate we were on the 13.7k/8.6mi feeder ride – Ravenscourt Park to St. James’s Park. Here we weren’t in such a big group but there were still enough riders on the signed and marshalled course to make us skip a couple of cycles waiting to get through a green light. Although the pace was still low, this felt more like proper cycling and I kept an eye on Mal while we were out in the big, bad world. She was enjoying herself now and I guess, realising it’s not as bad as she might’ve thought. We ended up missing part of the course and riding straight up Holland Park Ave. (up to Notting Hill). This was part of my normal commute and is always rammed with cars and often a real pain. Mal was zipping along now even scooting between lines of stopped cars to get up to the ASL. It looked like she’d be doing this for years! We were passing people up the hill and then I took off (come on! I had to at least once!) and she jumped and followed me up the hill! Champ!

Into Hyde Park we had another little “race” while Graham took pics.. totally in awe of our speed.. hehe 😉

My workmate Harvey called and said they were turning people away from the festival because it was too full! Hmm.. We carried on through Wellington Arch to Buckingham Palace and joined the large queues waiting to get in to the bike parking, the festival or onto the course itself. People at the crossings were swinging large GO/STOP signs to sort out traffic flow, pedestrian crossings, etc. Tried a few more times to locate Harvey and decided to score some of Hovis’s free sandwiches before doing the actual ride. Found the face painting and said g’day to Harvey and his daughter. After some sandwiches we explored some more of the festival’s stalls, watched some BMX tricks, watched people test ride funny bikes, watched some trials riding. Spotted MA3K (with his baby carrying Cove!) and Stompy from londonfgss and then bailed so we actually did the ride!

The ride was fun. Like I said, I was prepared to be on the go slow and I was just chuffed that I’d managed to drag Mal all the way into London. The loop around the Embankment and over Blackfriars bridge is very similar to the London 10k run I did a while ago. I guess there’s no workers here on a Sunday so it’s easy to close to traffic.. let’s see them do the same to the City on a Friday 🙂

There was lots of stop starting during the ride which some people found annoying but it gave me some time to snap photos. They had official photo points but we didn’t use any of them. Heading east on the embankment we passed a huge truck, with a difference. It was powered by cyclists!

The massive “Guinness World Record Bike” started up and sounded like nothing else – just a huge whirring noise as loads of people rode it down the street.

The tunnel on embankment was also cool! Everyone was whistling and screaming and whooping up a storm. When you have hundreds/thousands of people passing through a tunnel – this makes quite a racket!!

I spent a lot of the ride spotting the singlespeeders and fixed riders out of the crowd, checking to see if I knew any of them and checking out their bikes. There were also a few low-rider, chopper bikes doing the ride.. as well as a guy dressed as a shark!

After the ride we made our way back to the Freewheel Festival. Met a few more London FGSS riders, set a time on the new Rollapaluza rollers (still too slow!). Graham left to meet a mate and then called a while later to say he had a flat and his spare tube was stuffed. I rode over to Hyde Park to sort him out with a spare. We also got to watch the German Artistic Cycling team – the current world champions! They were awesome, e.g. one bloke popping the bike into a wheelie while another guy stands on his shoulders!

The ride home was still marshalled around 5pm but we decided to simply head back following my normal commute along Uxbridge Rd. Mal was awesome and handled the traffic like she’d been doing it for ages. We treated ourselves to pizza and cider at home. About 50 kilometres of riding in all for us, tonnes of bikes out thanks to top weather and some interesting entertainment in town. All in all – a great day!