I squeeze myself and my gravel bike down the narrow hallway, out through the front door and step out onto the pavement. I clip into my pedals and head off down the road, navigating past row after row of terraced Victorian houses. Several kilometres later I find myself on a busy main road, but luckily not long after I’ve joined it, I turn sharply off the tarmac onto an unremarkable path that looks like it could lead to a dead end. At the end of this path is the start of the day’s adventure - a small area of woodland nestled between the houses and shops lining the surrounding streets. The day will be mostly made of these small areas of woodland, tenuously strung together by a selection of quiet and occasionally not-so-quiet sections of tarmac.
A reaction that I often hear when I tell someone that I’m a London-based gravel cyclist is “really? I didn’t think London had much gravel.” Okay, admittedly we don’t have kilometre after kilometre of winding gravel roads in great ancient forests and wide-open landscapes - you know, the sort you see in photos that make you yearn for the wild outdoors. However, what we do have is a little-known (and somewhat disjointed) network of bridleways and byways, which, with a bit of local knowledge and a selection of maps, can be linked together to make for some pretty epic days out on the bike.
Would you believe me if I told you that all of these photos were taken in London? (Okay, admittedly some of these are a stone’s throw over the official border of Greater London, but you get what I mean. Before I started exploring the spaces in between the urban sprawl I wouldn’t have believed there was so much nature around me.
There is also such a variety of off-road terrain available in any direction, and we also have great access to major train stations, so you can start rides further out and/or cut a ride short and hop on a train back into town.
Removing the rose-tinted cycling glasses for a second, there downsides to riding in this city. Typically I can have 10-15km of mixed surface riding before getting to longer gravel segments found in the outer boroughs.
This is just one of those things that you have to accept as a city-based gravel cyclist! That being said, the first part of the ride doesn’t have to be 100% tarmac and traffic lights. One way that I keep these initial kilometres exciting is to whet my appetite with short sections of trail through parks and woodland closer to my home, on the way to the longer gravel sectors that I’m aiming for.
If I plot a ride and komoot tells me it’s roughly 50% unpaved/gravel (such a useful feature!), that’s a pretty good result and I know I’m in for an amazing and challenging day out.
What many non-locals might not know is that London sits in a bit of a bowl geographically-speaking – it’s flat and low-lying in the middle but surrounded by hilly landscapes as you get further out. These hills are where I like to roam, sometimes they’re steep and rough, but the views are totally worth the climb.
So, next time you find yourself in the city, pop some 35mm+ rubber on (I've seen people getting away with 28mm but I wouldn't recommend it!) and head off down those unremarkable paths.
You'll see the city from a completely different perspective and realize that you can feel quite remote from civilisation despite being completely surrounded by it.
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