This weekend the Prudential RideLondon cycling events were on. The 100 mile ride that my cousin’s hubbie Vince took part in, ended up being curtailed with the Box Hill section taken out due to the bad weather on Sunday. No matter though – he’s raised over a thousand pounds for Marie Curie Cancer Care – well done Vinnie!!
Now I’m not a super cyclist and I haven’t been training for the last 6 months like Vince, so instead Kimmy and I took part in the FreeLondon ride. This was a family friendly 10 mile route around the city, along the Embankment and through Green Park and back up the Mall. There were shorter routes available for kiddies and a few festival fun zones where you could park your bike and take in some entertainment, or get it safety checked for free.
We did the whole route in our snazzy hi-vi vests:
At Green Park we parked the bikes and went for a wander around the festival zone
We then got back on the road to return to our start point, Gresham Street by London Guildhall
The crowds down the Mall – it was very busy here with me basically pushing my bike – things got faster after we got through the bottle neck & pedestrian crossings
Seeing as I hadn’t riden my bike in about 18 months I got a free health check for it at Gresham street festival, where they gave it the ok, pumped my tires a fraction more & made my bell secure!
So many different people joined in this free ride. We saw people in serious Lycra (almost falling off their bikes at the slow bits lol!), whole families and kids on tricycles being pulled behind mum & dad and random tourists on Barclays Bikes looking rather bemused about the whole situation!
I would recommend doing this next year – whole swathes of the city are closed off so it’s a unique traffic free experience. Go early to get your bike checked over and before the Central London bits get over crowded – we met at 11am and it was busy when we got to Green Park. In total, with a stop in the middle, it took us just under 2 hours to get around the course.
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