You do not expect to find mind-blowingly good gravel riding hiding in plain sight in the hinterlands of the UK’s most populous city. People, traffic, concrete, noise, pollution and dirt would not normally be ingredients for gravel nirvana. Yet year after year, the organisers of North London Dirt manage to pull a gravelly rabbit out of a hat and show participants just how good the local riding is, if you know where to look. Olly managed to wangle a place at this ever-popular event and waxes lyrical about his love for riding in this overlooked part of the UK.
Every away-from-the-road cycling photographer probably knows the frustration of trying to capture the essence of what they’re riding, but being unable to take their hands off the handlebars to do so. This was exactly how I was feeling, less than thirty minutes after setting off from North London Dirt HQ in Stoke Newington. I had this thought as I flew down a narrow woodland trail, chasing a small gaggle of riders in front and equally trying to evade the group following behind me.
The trail wove a sinuous route through broadleaf forest and was cloaked in a carapace of bright green leaves. Despite the fact it was only early May, the ground beneath our tyres was parched to the point of sounding hollow. The trail was rippled thanks to an unseen subterranean tangle of ancient tree routes, but the surface was smooth enough to allow us to flow, pumping through the undulations to gain free speed.
I dearly wanted to snap a couple of images and looked fleetingly over my right shoulder. Dust motes kicked up by our passing tyres hung thickly in the spring air. Beams of early morning sunlight pierced through the dusty fug like something from a Hollywood movie. A silent voice in my head screamed for me to stop and take a photo, but the trail was too much fun. Endorphins triumphed over artistic endeavour and I continued my ride through the forest, mentally sending waves of heartfelt gratitude to Andrew and Philip Diprose, the geniuses behind the NLD phenomena, as I rode.
The perimeter of Greater London is bound by an enormous concrete and tarmac motorway of hideousness known as the M25. Inside, London is a city of around 9 million people. It covers 600 square miles (1572 km2). As with all vast cities, it’s busy, noisy and chaotic. This is not where you would generally consider gravelly heaven to be found. This year was the ninth edition of the NLD and like all the previous editions, it had sold out in record time. The combination of amazing riding, an über-friendly atmosphere, the fact that all the profits go to charity and the incredibly generous goodie bag given to all the participants have helped create a deep-seated reputation for NLD as a do-not-miss event.
Obviously, every rider’s definition of perfection will vary and not all of you would necessarily have loved some of the twistier sections of woodland singletrack which made up the early part of the route. But for every section of challenging riding, there was a dollop of freshly-opened champagne-gravel shared-use trail, like this one. During their scouting missions for the event, Andrew and Philip came across the nascent trail and asked the construction crew when it would be finished. A couple of weeks before NLD was scheduled to be held was the smile-inducing answer.
“Are we definitely still inside the M25?” I must have asked this question a dozen times, although (hopefully) some of them were only inside my head. In places, it felt like we were riding through a vast country park. Skylarks burbled, a warm sun beat down from a pale blue sky and fast-rolling trails willed us inexorably onwards towards the water stop that marked the halfway point of the ride.
“Where the hell are we?” is the kind of joke that the residents of Ware have probably tired of quite a while ago, but it kept us entertained briefly, as we wiggled our way through their Saturday lunchtime traffic. After topping up our water bottles, chatting with the mechanics, who were busy completing what looked like a full-service on one participant’s bike, and getting our brevet cards stamped, we set off in search of lunch. Aleks, who joined us after we got chatting to him at the start, knew of a local bakery which sounded like a much better option than a soggy supermarket sandwich for lunch, so we followed his wheel and soon found ourselves sitting outside in the sunshine, feeding our faces with freshly baked goodies.
The trails seemed to change in nature once we were outside the M25 and the afternoon saw us tackling an impressive range of smooth, wide gravel roads. They were slightly too lumpy to be considered proper ‘champagne’ gravel, but the sheer number of them was impressive. Our post-lunch route tied together long stretches of trail with short linking sections of road. The balance was just right and some of the trails had a slight technical edge to them, which meant, particularly if you were riding ‘enthusiastically’, you had to concentrate and focus on your line choice. The end of each section saw everyone’s faces plastered with enormous grins.
As the afternoon wound on and we started to head back towards the Big Smoke, our route become more suburban in nature. Sections of riding along the towpath of the River Lea Navigation were interspersed with sections through housing estates, an eery (but amazing) trail through an area previously excavated for sand & gravel, sections of shared-use trail and small strips of urban cut-through. Coming back into contact with people (and car drivers) was quite a shock, having spent so much of the morning left to our own devices.
The sections alongside the canal were lovely and hideous with equal measure. The warm sunny weather had brought out increasing numbers of people and the closer in towards London we got, the busier the trail became. A couple of close calls with e-bike riders either not paying attention or riding far above a speed that was sensible, persuaded me it was time for a breather, so I gently twisted the arms of my grupetto and we stopped for a tactical ice cream break.
As we rolled back into the incredibly affluent suburbs of north London, legs and faces liberally caked in dust, I had a real twinge of sadness that our ride was coming to an end. We had deliberately chosen to ride the shorter of the two options available (110km rather than the 160km ‘Luxe’ option), so that we could take our time and make the ride sociable rather than a mad rush, but there was a bit of me that wished we could have done just a few more trails before coming back to reality!
North London Dirt finished, as always, with a complimentary wood fired pizza and a choice of perfectly chilled draft beer for each participant. As we sat in the warm afternoon sunshine, faces glowing, legs appropriately dirty and souls topped up to maximum with gravelly goodness, it made me realise, yet again, what a brilliant event it is. Each year, the event creators Philip and Andrew expend an inordinate amount of time and energy to make the event as good as possible and this year, with the summery weather laid on as a bonus, was my favourite of all the editions that I’ve ridden in.
Next year will be the tenth edition and will undoubtedly be super popular again. If you want to discover for yourself just how good North London Dirt really is, then I highly recommend you follow them on Insta if you want to find out when the event will be held. All the profits from the event go to an incredibly worthwhile charity – St Mary’s Centre and they always welcome extra donations.