Around 250 kilometres, more than 2,000 metres of climbing, and a loop that never quite leaves the hum of the motorway behind. This summer and autumn, five London Dynamo members rode all the way around London in a single day, following the M25 as closely as a bike sensibly can.
The loop
The riders went anticlockwise, through Surrey, Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire and the Chilterns, and finished where they started. Tom Evans and Jack Leigh set off on Sunday 16 August from the Runnymede side. Rodrigo Mattiuz, Matthew Kaznowski and Mark Jenvey followed on Sunday 27 September, starting near Heathrow. There is no official route, so the two groups picked slightly different lines. Both came back with the same verdict: the lanes just outside the M25 are far better than you would expect.
Matthew put it best: “It turns out you really don’t have to go that far out of London in any direction to get to some seriously nice lanes.”
If you would like a ready-made version, there is another way round. The London Revolution Ultra was a sportive that no longer runs, a 251km road loop around London, and the Route Book keeps its route for anyone who wants to ride it themselves.
The loop by the numbers
- Distance: about 250km
- Climbing: around 2,300 metres
- Fastest ride of the five: 7 hours 52 minutes of riding time
- Average speed on that ride: about 31.5km/h
- Time door to door, including stops: roughly 10 hours for most of the riders
All figures come from the riders’ Strava recordings.
Why do it?
For Tom, the honest answer was the map. “Mainly the Strava map!” he says. “There’s also something quite cool about riding the closest possible thing to the M25 on a bike.”
Rodrigo had wanted to do it for a long time. It was one of his goals, and he did not want to do it alone. He put the call out on WhatsApp, and Matthew and Mark said yes. Matthew had less than a week’s notice. Mark was “always up for a bit of a challenge”, the forecast looked good, and he had “a pass from the boss”.
Training? Nobody did anything special. Mark’s preparation was the Tuesday and Thursday Midweek Ride rides. Matthew’s normal Sunday is 200km or more, so this was “closer to routine than it should have been”. Tom and Jack had both ridden the LD Goes to Cambridge and Oxford (one way) rides, which gave them a decent base and, in Tom’s words, “perhaps inspired us to take on something a bit more ridiculous”.
The funniest moments
The star of the second ride was Rodrigo’s left cleat. He had checked everything the night before, then spotted at 1am that his cleats were worn and swapped them just before bed. Too tired to notice, he left out a spacer on one shoe. A few kilometres in, still under the Heathrow flight path, the shoe came off with the cleat still clipped to the pedal. Matthew lent him a spacer, one more came from the other shoe, and they were away. “I had prepared everything so carefully, and then I made such a complete newbie mistake,” Rodrigo says. Mark’s answer was one line: “Rodrigo & his cleats - I’m sure he’s shared the details.”
On the first ride, Tom claims the funniest moment was dropping Jack on every climb, “although he might remember that slightly differently (don’t believe anything he tells you)”.
The tough bits
Ask five riders for the hardest part and you get a tour of the loop.
- Essex: Matthew remembers a headwind after crossing the border with little shelter, which the group handled by taking turns at the front.
- The north: Tom found the stretch from Brentwood to Amersham endless. “Every time I checked the distance, I felt we should have covered another 50 km, only to find we’d done about 500 m!” Mark found the top of the loop from Waltham Cross round to South Mimms the least enjoyable, with long built-up sections, though he says the rest is “surprisingly rural” with some great lanes.
- The Chilterns: Rodrigo says the last stretch was the hardest, with three or four steep hills late in the day when his legs were close to cramping.
Fuelling a very long day
Everyone took eating seriously, in their own way.
- Tom arrived with enough food to “feed an entire pro tour team”, drank carb mix regularly and ate on a schedule. Jack, he reports, brought a gel and a cereal bar. Stops along the way included sushi, salted nuts, an ice cream and a lot of Coke.
- Rodrigo planned his carbs around the hours he expected to ride: jelly sweets, gels, bars, electrolytes and a proper breakfast stop, after a big plate of rice the night before.
- Matthew started loading carbs the day before and aimed for around 80 to 100g an hour, mostly sugar water, sweets and fizzy drinks, with a proper cafe stop at lunchtime.
- Mark stuck to his usual isotonic, gel and bar mix, then tucked into sausage rolls and a Scotch egg from a supermarket at the second stop “just to mix it up a bit”.
If you want to plan your own, our guide to fuelling a century ride is a good place to start.
Advice from the riders
- Pace yourself. Matthew: “Make sure you don’t burn all your matches at the start,” and eat far more than feels necessary, because you will burn more than you can take on.
- Check your bike. Rodrigo’s advice is to check, double-check and triple-check everything, and to have a few long rides in your legs first. The group also stopped for a puncture where the sealant did not seal.
- Know your escape routes. Mark points out that the start and finish are easy to reach by the Elizabeth line and Heathrow Terminal 5, and that there are plenty of stations close to the route if you need to cut it short.
- Plan your Dartford Crossing. Rodrigo’s tip: the van that takes riders over the crossing needs no booking for a group of up to three, but a bigger group has to call ahead first.
- Pick your partner carefully. Tom: “Jack refused to ride with me for at least a month afterwards!” Rodrigo thanks Mark and Matthew, because sharing a day like this “makes it so much better”. Mark agrees: with three of you there is no hiding place.
- Enjoy it. Tom says it is quite something to watch the landscape change as you pass through each county, and that the roads just outside the M25 are “surprisingly beautiful and relatively quiet”.
Would they do it again? Tom already has plans for a bigger group next time.
Watch the film
Rodrigo filmed the second ride for his Crank & Sprints channel: watch the full film on YouTube.
Fancy your own long day out?
You do not need to go round the M25 to enjoy a proper ride with good company. Come along to a Club Ride, browse the Route Book for your next long one, or find out how to join London Dynamo.
Photos by Tom Evans and Jack Leigh.
