Not Liège-Bastogne-Liège, but London to Brighton and back. It’s a fairly regular Dynamo event – each year a group meet up in the Wandsworth Common area and have a blast down to Brighton for breakfast, followed by a more leisurely ride back to London. Setting off at 6am means that we quickly get through the worst of the London road junctions and the front groups from the official L2B BHF ride and enjoy the clear roads for a good pacey ride. This year was no different, although with the brisk Northerly breeze we did manage a slightly improved time – I made our journey down 2hrs 24 minutes, including a 5min puncture stop and an irritating sequence of red lights for the last couple of miles.
Breakfast was at Katz café on the seafront where, as usual, they coped really well with a sudden influx of very hungry cyclists. Over the past four years they have regularly served us quality full English - they’re stars! It is definitely the highlight of the ride and makes the return journey almost bearable.
A slightly more relaxed (although hardly slow) ride back saw us enter the familiar grey suburbs of the southwest of London in good time, allowing me to be back home for lunch at 1pm – perfect. Ten minutes later (after a shower and a quick online donation to the BHF) I was tucking into a great buffet spread with the family.
It’s turning into a good traditional activity for the club and I hope we are not viewed in a poor light for taking advantage of the mainly closed roads. I think we ride really well, we’re very careful passing other riders in the early stages, and anyone who wants to tag on for a while to take advantage of a bit of a draft is welcomed, even if the pace might sometimes sneakily creep up to see how long they can hold on! Each year we make a conscious effort to encourage all the riders to donate to the BHF as some sort of ‘compensation’ and, from what I can tell from chatting on the way down, BHF do pretty well out of us.
A total of just over 110 miles with a large chunk done near threshold - good training for La Marmotte in a couple of weeks.
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