The festive season, chockablock with social obligations, can start to eat into your ride time. There’s a silver lining though – on the 25th December and the 1st January, as swathes of people sleep in and nurse hangovers, the early cyclist can catch the juiciest of worms. The usual roads and trails are all there, but devoid of the crowds. Get out early enough and you could even be back before the rest of the house is out of bed!
Brixton CC are veterans of this technique, and they’ve pooled a few of their favourite routes for a seasonal escape session.
On the daily grind, just getting from A to B amidst the scream of traffic, it’s easy to forget that London is a pretty awesome place to be. This loop into SE can remind you of that in under two hours. Sure, it’s not going to be like this every day but that’s no reason not to value how it can be!
The early hours of Christmas morning or New Years Day are two rare opportunities to pedal round the Tamsin Trail of Richmond Park in (relative) solitude. While there is plenty of tarmac on the journey over from Brixton, this route is one for wider tyres – sections can get muddy!
This route is a little longer, but it’s a great shout for anybody concerned about training disruption at this time of year. There’s little in the way of punishing gradients, so a good average speed can be maintained – plus the roads involved are generally well-gritted.
Getting over to the trails can be a little trickier on a bank holiday but if you can get there, this loop takes on an entirely different character in the early hours of a midwinter day. There are some technical moments but on the whole this is more of a MTB trek than a trail session. All the same, ride within your limits.
