The very idea!
LDN Bridges and Beers Ride. June 14th.
- Thread starter iLB
- Start date
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ttcycle
Cycling Excusiast
Have you moved from the barstool yet?
I'll have you know I am already on the train home.
StuAff
Silencing his legs regularly
- Location
- Portsmouth
+1. Having failed to get this month's ton last week, decided to prioritise putting that right (and I did).
@ttcycle May your knees shut up promptly.
slowmotion
Quite dreadful
- Location
- lost somewhere
That was fun. Many thanks to Andy for setting it up. I love riding next to the river. It doesn't have hills and it has lots of pubs. And good company. As a bonus, we had User and Grace again.
A great day.
A great day.
U
User10571
Guest
Yes. All of that.
rb58
Enigma
- Location
- Bexley, Kent
When I arrived at HC station, @User13710 said she was feeding the Jackdaws. Frankly, I think she was eating cake. My kind of bike ride!!
anothersam
SMIDSMe
- Location
- Far East Sussex
Nice to meet people I'd either never met, which was just about everybody, or had, but fleetingly and long enough and dark enough ago to disqualify as proper introductions. Thank you @iLB.
PS. Unofficial ride report, not at all comprehensive
https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/velosolo-club.142621/post-3745749
PS. Unofficial ride report, not at all comprehensive
https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/velosolo-club.142621/post-3745749
Last edited:
We had fun! Thanks to @iLB for setting up & liaising with me so that I could bring a group of 10 from the east & link up at The Ship.
I was delighted that we were joined by @Trickedem & @mllond for our Grand Depart from Mile End. The weather was miserably cold & damp but our spirits were undamp (I topped it up later). London looked good & was suitable quirky as 10 of us twisted & turned a tortuous route through its lanes until we emerged into the West End bustle: as Adie See said later, there were "peds on the path" galore along the Mall for some monarchist pantomime thingy & the entrance to Hyde Park had been almost successfully blocked, at least on a physical plane, by the Hare Krishnas but we glided through & some of us released the inner Cav along South Carriage Drive.
Across Battersea Bridge & more twists & turns along the river to The Ship at Wandsworth. We had to shiver for a while until the Bridges & Beers Ride joined us. My group peeled off one by one from the pub & I joined Andy's democratic peloton as we crisscrossed the river east to The Mudlark at London Bridge where we tested the taps along the length of the bar.
I'm not sure exactly how I got home from there but I did with a smile on my face.
I was delighted that we were joined by @Trickedem & @mllond for our Grand Depart from Mile End. The weather was miserably cold & damp but our spirits were undamp (I topped it up later). London looked good & was suitable quirky as 10 of us twisted & turned a tortuous route through its lanes until we emerged into the West End bustle: as Adie See said later, there were "peds on the path" galore along the Mall for some monarchist pantomime thingy & the entrance to Hyde Park had been almost successfully blocked, at least on a physical plane, by the Hare Krishnas but we glided through & some of us released the inner Cav along South Carriage Drive.
Across Battersea Bridge & more twists & turns along the river to The Ship at Wandsworth. We had to shiver for a while until the Bridges & Beers Ride joined us. My group peeled off one by one from the pub & I joined Andy's democratic peloton as we crisscrossed the river east to The Mudlark at London Bridge where we tested the taps along the length of the bar.
I'm not sure exactly how I got home from there but I did with a smile on my face.
A wonderful ride. Mostly through parts of West London completely new to me or not visited in the last thirty years!
Things change. Not at Hampton Court and the delightful and surprising rural stuff to beyond Richmond. Then it went very badly downhill. Not the ride, that was great but the the modern environment between Putney and Vauxhall! That has really changed. Has anything in the annals of architecture has so much rubbish been thrown together by speculators with a complete absence of taste and competence?
Being a bit deaf I couldn't fully join the hubbub at The Ship. Instead I just stared in amazement at the building in front of us (the one with the curved top). I lost count of the number of fundamental design errors that turned what could have been an interesting shape into a confusion of disparate unconnected design elements. It looked cheap and slipshod. I'm not talking about style - whether you are into Palladian, Georgian, Brutalist or any other style - you can do it brilliantly, competently or very badly. You expect a mixture of each - but not uniformly bad. And that's what we had stacked up on both sides of the Thames in that dreadful reach. It made the old World's End Council Estate in Chelsea look almost good in comparison!
Yet you could see a lot of money had beenwasted spent on pointless details (fancy rills anybody?) while neglecting the fundamentals, the shape, the balance, the impact of major blocks that will ruin that part of the Thames for the next century. Sad to see so many ground floor apartment windows were caged as their wealthy owners were obviously elsewhere in a city where other people are having to live in dreadful crowded housing.
But you can't beat a good power station and I counted at least three that retained their power visually even if not electrically. Pity Battersea PS is now engulfed in such mediocrity.
That's the joy of cycling. It moves you from place to place at a speed to see a lot at a pace that gives you time to study and reflect and not excluded from the atmosphere by glass and metal. Yesterday was, perhaps, the greatest way to discover and re-discover the city in which most of us lived. And in such great company too!
Perhaps - a re-run next year going in the opposite direction? Nice to end up in a rural paradise. Or even Hampton Court. Thank you @iLB
Things change. Not at Hampton Court and the delightful and surprising rural stuff to beyond Richmond. Then it went very badly downhill. Not the ride, that was great but the the modern environment between Putney and Vauxhall! That has really changed. Has anything in the annals of architecture has so much rubbish been thrown together by speculators with a complete absence of taste and competence?
Being a bit deaf I couldn't fully join the hubbub at The Ship. Instead I just stared in amazement at the building in front of us (the one with the curved top). I lost count of the number of fundamental design errors that turned what could have been an interesting shape into a confusion of disparate unconnected design elements. It looked cheap and slipshod. I'm not talking about style - whether you are into Palladian, Georgian, Brutalist or any other style - you can do it brilliantly, competently or very badly. You expect a mixture of each - but not uniformly bad. And that's what we had stacked up on both sides of the Thames in that dreadful reach. It made the old World's End Council Estate in Chelsea look almost good in comparison!
Yet you could see a lot of money had been
But you can't beat a good power station and I counted at least three that retained their power visually even if not electrically. Pity Battersea PS is now engulfed in such mediocrity.
That's the joy of cycling. It moves you from place to place at a speed to see a lot at a pace that gives you time to study and reflect and not excluded from the atmosphere by glass and metal. Yesterday was, perhaps, the greatest way to discover and re-discover the city in which most of us lived. And in such great company too!
Perhaps - a re-run next year going in the opposite direction? Nice to end up in a rural paradise. Or even Hampton Court. Thank you @iLB
Can I be 70 again?
slowmotion
Quite dreadful
- Location
- lost somewhere
Aperitif
Meme bar
- Location
- ...I don't have much idea - really.
Having been without working phone or 'net most of this weekend, and then receiving all sorts of notifications...I venture that the news is 'bicycle related'. Nothing special therefore...
Andy will be along soon to delhiver, I guess.Similar threads
