(An abridged version of this article was published in the October-December 2009 issue of “The West Surrey Cyclist”.
It’s the birds and the bees, rose-bowered cottages and the return to nature that motivates most lovers of the outdoor life, cyclists included. No wonder then that most club runs, including ours, head for the countryside and avoid towns and cities like holes in the road.
But there is something to be said for the urban run. And if we assume that, of all the great cities in the world, London is among the best, then a ride across it is very special indeed.
Twice a year, on a Wednesday in July and a Sunday in September, Bill Carnaby of the Hounslow & District Wheelers organises a 100k Audax ride called the London Sightseer, which takes in nearly every famous landmark in London. It’s a masterpiece of planning as most of it is through parks and along riverside paths, though some busy roads are inevitable. On Wednesday the streets are busy and the parks empty, while on Sunday it’s the other way round.
As a Londoner born and bred, I thought I knew most of its nooks and crannies, but the London Sightseer is a revelation. Where else in the world could you, in a single day, take in 8 parks, 5 palaces, 2 cathedrals, 13 bridges, 1 tunnel, 2 cities, 3 markets, 3 historic ships, 4 art galleries, 2 music venues, 2 great theatres, 4 media centres and 8 shrines to the famous dead? Not to mention the world’s financial hub and the docks and locks that made Britain Great?
Last year, a small group of us W. Surrey cyclists rode the two London Sightseers. Bill provides a route sheet which runs to four closely-typed A4 pages, the most intricate of all Audax route sheets. The route generally follows the Thames - out along its north bank and back along its south - and the furthest points are Greenwich Park and the Millenium Dome. The trickiest bits are in the City of London, and it’s easy to lose direction - and each other - in its maze of streets, as we did!
The ride starts with words of encouragement and advice from Bill outside his house in Hampton Hill. Then it’s off along the road to Twickenham and on to the Thames Path and past Richmond, Twickenham and Isleworth bridges into Syon Park. On our right is Syon House, the stately home where Princess Victoria lived before she became Queen. It’s also the first toilet stop beside the Great Conservatory, the model for Paxton’s Crystal Palace and the setting for the movies Gosford Park and The Madness of King George.
On into Brentford and past the Kew Bridge Steam Museum and then back onto the Thames Path at Strand on the Green, with Eel Pie Island on the right - where the Rolling Stones had their first gigs - to Hammersmith.
Then comes some urban riding, along side streets rather than busy roads, through Shepherds Bush, Holland Park and Bayswater, with Portobello Market just a street away. Then into Kensington Gardens, with a second toilet stop by the gate.
On past the Round Pond, with Kensington Palace on the right and through the Gardens past the Albert Hall and Memorial to the Serpentine and Hyde Park. The memorial to Princess Diana is to our left, with Rotten Row on the right.
At Hyde Park corner beside Wellington’s Memorial we were stopped in our tracks by a march-past of the Horse Guards, the ‘Blues & Royals’. A second ceremonial treat was in store outside Buckingham Palace as we weaved through crowds watching the ‘Changing of the Guard’.
On past Clarence House, down Constitution Hill, through Admiralty Arch and into Trafalgar Square. On the Wednesday this was the busiest part of the ride, but on the Sunday the Square was closed to traffic.
At the end of the Strand we dodged traffic around the Aldwych past Bush House where the BBC broadcasts to the world. As we entered Fleet Street and cycled past St Clement Danes opposite the Royal Courts of Justice the church bells began pealing ‘Oranges and Lemons’ as we crossed from one City (Westminster) to another (London).
Heavy traffic on the Wednesday continued up Ludgate Hill, past St Paul’s Cathedral and into the City proper, where we lost John at traffic lights. A couple of circuits around the Gherkin, the Bank of England, Lloyds and the Royal Exchange failed to find him. It was all so different on the Sunday ride when the City was empty.
Having sadly given John up for lost we pressed on down tiny side streets - Jewry St and India St - to the Tower of London. A left turn by Tower Bridge and we were back beside the river again following the Thames Path. This was now Charles Dickens territory, with the famous Prospect of Whitby pub in Wapping a Dickensian relic. But the Thameside tenements have given way to yuppified apartments, no more so than around St Katharine’s Dock.
We are now well and truly in old Docklands and one revelation of a ride along the Thames is how often you have to cross little bridges to straddle streams and canals like Limehouse Cut or get from one side of a dock to another. The apartments and office blocks around Canary Wharf look to the future - of post-Imperial Britain - but the past is there in names that evoke the greatness of Empire: Millwall Dock (where Brunel built his ‘Great Eastern’), West India Docks, Canada Square, Cabot Square.
Passing Billingsgate Fish Market we are now on the Isle of Dogs, the peninsula which follows the long meander of the Thames. Once an island, it is a place of social extremes, with high concentrations of council housing alongside some of the highest average incomes in the UK.
We’ve now done 50 kms non-stop and are ready for a break. And there, at the foot of the Isle of Dogs is the Island Gardens café, the half-way point of the ride where Bill is waiting to mark our cards. No sooner do we arrive than John also turns up, to our great relief and his. The café is run by an elderly Jamaican couple famous for their Caribbean goat curry and salt fish dumpling, but riding against the clock allows time only for a sandwich.
Directly opposite the café on the south side of the Thames is the Greenwich National Maritime Museum. To get there we enter a rotunda and load the bikes into a wooden-panelled, attendant-operated lift which takes us down to the Thames Foot Tunnel. Opened in 1902 to allow dockers from south of the river to get to work at West India Docks, the Tunnel is now part of National Cycle Route 1 linking Inverness with Dover. Cycling is forbidden, though, so we push our bikes through.
The Tunnel comes out beside the Cutty Sark, shrouded in white tarpaulin during renovations following a devastating fire. We head north past the bustling Greenwich Market, enter Greenwich Park and start climbing to the Observatory and the line of the Meridian. Pausing beside the statue of General Wolfe, founder of Quebec, we take in the stunning view of London from Greenwich Hill.
After the Park steep streets swoop down by Vanbrugh Fields and across a couple of flyovers to reach the river again. As we pass the Millenium Dome Carol reminds us that she’ll be back in a few months time to see Tina Turner perform live on her final tour. Beyond the David Beckham Soccer School, the Thames Path is tricky to negotiate and we abandon the three recumbent riders who find the tight corners difficult. The path is particularly narrow along the front of the Greenwich Royal Naval College, so we guess they’d have to find an alternative route.
The route now meanders around the waterways of the old Surrey Commercial Docks and everywhere there are place names that evoke its maritime past: Norway Dock, Greenland Dock, Quebec Dock, Russia Walk, Czar Street, Finland Street, Archangel Street.
By now we are gasping for a drink, so stop at the historic Mayflower pub in Rotherhithe. Quaffing beers with a smart set on the jetty we wonder what the teetotal Pilgrim Fathers would have thought as they set sail for America from here in 1620.
There are more tricky chicanes, and as we turn sharply in Butler’s Wharf on a wooden walkway Barry’s front tyre catches in a groove and he goes over the handlebars. For respite we lean the bikes against Paolozzi’s bizarre ‘Head of Invention’ outside the Design Museum - where John mends a puncture - and then judder along bum-numbing cobbles to Tower Bridge.
We are now in serious tourist territory and weave through crowds past symbols of government (London Assembly), theatre (Shakespeare’s ‘Globe’) and war (HMS Belfast, which saw action against the ‘Scharnhorst’ and ‘Tirpitz’ in World War 2). Further on, we take in religion (Southwark Cathedral), exploration (Drake’s Golden Hind) and the arts (Tate Modern, the National Theatre and Festival Hall).
After the London Eye we make our first bridge crossing. Westminster Bridge, busy on the Wednesday ride, is curiously empty on the Sunday. This is because of the Prologue of the Tour of Britain, which also leaves Parliament Square marvellously free of traffic.
On down the Embankment past Tate Britain, left across Chelsea Bridge and right into Battersea Park. Near the Peace Pagoda on North Carriage Drive we are at the heart of cycling history. In 1895 cycling was at the height of aristocratic fashion, and because it was banned in Hyde Park riders came to Battersea Park to practice, as Jerome K Jerome noted; ‘... elderly countesses, perspiring peers, still at the wobbly stage, battled briefly with the laws of equilibrium; occasionally defeated, they would fling their arms round the necks of hefty young hooligans who were reaping a rich harvest as cycling instructors.’
It’s back across the river over Battersea Bridge and along the Chelsea Embankment past Cheyne Walk, whose residents are a ‘Who’s Who’ of the arts; Vaughan Williams, George Eliot, Rossetti, Swinburne, Whistler, Henry James, Turner, Sylvia Pankhurst, TS Eliot and Ian Fleming all lived there, as did hooligans Keith Richards and George Best!
We are now in up-market West London. The old Lots Road Power Station has given way to the trendy Chelsea Harbour, and after crossing Wandsworth Bridge Road we pass the exclusive Hurlingham Club before crossing Putney Bridge.
A sharp right over the bridge where the Boat Race starts and we realise we have lost Carol who, we discover later, had followed the correct route along Putney Embankment while the rest of us hadn’t.
We retrace our tracks and wait, but with no sign of Carol we reluctantly press on past Holdsworth Cycles and the sycamore tree on Putney Common which is a place of pilgrimage for fans of glam-rocker Marc Bolan of T Rex. He was killed when a purple mini he was travelling in hit it in 1977.
We turn into Priory Lane past the Priory rehab clinic and through Sheen Gate into Richmond Park. This feels like real countryside with rural vistas and herds of deer. On our left is former royal residence, the White Lodge, where Nelson stayed the month before Trafalgar. It is now the Royal Ballet School.
Out through Ham Gate and across Ham Common (where Tommy Steele lives) to Teddington Lock complex where we walk the bikes across the footbridge over the Thames. Immediately to our left is the famous Teddington Studios with plaques outside to Tommy Cooper, Sid James and the ‘Carry On’ team.
At Kingston Bridge the Thames Path takes us along the river to Hampton Court Palace, where the ghosts of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Cardinal Wolsey lurk behind red-brick walls. Spirits are flagging now as we enter the gates of Bushey Park on the final leg. Two deer leap out ahead of us after we circle the pond, following the tracks of 2,177 clubmen on penny-farthings who rode around it in the famous six-mile-long ‘monster meet’ of 1882. Those were the days when the CTC required members to remove or cover up their badges if they rode on a Sunday!
We reach Bill’s house in Hampton Hill High Street just within the ten-hour limit, where we re-join Carol for tea and cakes. The other riders, except the recumbents, had finished long ago. But for us it wasn’t a heads-down ride, but a wonderful journey through layers of history and human achievement that form the greatest city in the world.
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Web page by Chris Jeggo. Last revised: 16 November 2009.