London Lockdown - 100 mile night ride - Fri 21.03.2025 - 10pm start
6TH EDITION
Date: Friday, 21 March 2025
Start Time: 22:00, Victoria Station
Distance: 161 km
Elevation: 1,086m
Donation link (£10 recommended)
Ride Registration link (Google Form)
T.L.D.R.
A social urban audax to see London as you've never seen it (unless you joined a prior year), an introduction to endurance riding, or a practise overnight ride in the warm embrace of this great city. There are plenty of places open to stop and eat, or mingle with the locals. This is a party on wheels. Join as a group or come and meet new faces. Ride together or ride alone.
You WILL need a GPS device to follow the GPX route (or a mate with one).
OUTBREAK
In mid-March 2020 we heard that the bankers were sending their minions home - this must be serious. 28 lockdowns later, Bojo would announce “we are past the peak”. This ride seeks to replicate what it was like for us exercise-inclined during those unprecedented times. A bit weird... empty streets... circuitous. Staying local was a legal requirement. Non-essential travel was shamed.
Accepting the guilt that if I rode outside the M25 I could be “hit by a car and take an ambulance from someone who needed it”, I set about creating and sourcing local London routes. If I were hit by a car locally, at least I could crawl to a nearby hospital, or maybe the driver would take me there if they were nice. The London Fixed Beers missions were a particular highlight for me—giving riders a curated tour of London’s inner boroughs, while taking advantage of the empty streets (but for the ominous queues starting to form outside shops).
I rode the first version of this bored strava art project in April 2020, and one year later extended the route with the needle in commemoration of the vaccine arriving. Ironically, as I rode down the Mall while tracing the needle, I rode straight through an anti-vaccine protest. I've continued to ride it every year since. Let's just say it's got sentimental value.
Touring London’s empty boroughs turned out to be quite nice. But daylight scenes, reminiscent of Danny Boyle’s apocalyptic thriller 28 Days Later, are unlikely to repeat themselves, and I don’t want to lose half a lung riding 100 miles through London traffic. So the tradition continues at night.
ENTRY FEE
There is an advisory £10 donation (or more) to the Lewisham Bank of Things. You might think of LBT as a Food Bank, but instead of food, they provide everyday necessities to young people. When I think of lockdown I think of how hard it was on a great deal of people. I was extremely lucky.
Upon donation, please sign up to the ride using this form :)
Donation link (https://localgiving.org/London-Lockdown-2025)
Ride Registration link (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScNtbE3BWcN1uePovDvGfnQLt1r1q0q4eMjqKBpKlcG3rcp8A/viewform?usp=dialog)
In 2024, I had 40 riders on the starting line and I'm hoping to double that this year so please share with your friends, clubs, colleagues or mum and dad. If you or someone you know might want to sponsor a prize draw, we had Orb and Mistral Games donate draw prizes last year and would love to do the same again.
Please share with anyone who might be interested - it's for a good cause and good craic!
[Charity Ride Poster made with assistance from ChatGBT removed]