When you plan a gravel riding trip nearly six months in advance, there are all sorts of spanners which can be thrown into the 'works' as you near the day of departure. But a spanner as large as the coronation of a new king wasn’t something that Olly foresaw and so he ended up being in London to do some gravel riding the same weekend as millions of tourists. Will he get wrapped up in bunting and Union Jack flags or will he manage to escape the madness?

“Hope you’ve found somewhere to take cover? The noise of the thunder here is so loud it sounds like the world is ending” said the message from my sister. As the notification pinged up on my phone screen, I looked around at the bright blue sky and sunshine that I was experiencing and decided I was extremely fortunate. I was sitting less than 40 km to the south of where she was, yet in my world everything was peachy, but in hers, it was the end of the world.

I was in London to take part in the 2023 North London Dirt gravel event, but while I was there I had also planned to go out riding with Alex and Paul who own Moloko Cycling. Unfortunately, however, our plans didn’t quite work out as we had hoped. “I’m not going to be able to come and ride with you on Friday “ said the message from Alex “But I can share a route with you and we can meet up afterwards for a coffee?” That seemed like an ideal compromise, so I plugged Alex’s route into my bike computer and set off from east London, where I was staying with my sister and her family, to get to the south-west London base of Moloko to start the ride proper.

“Are you sure you’re going to be OK riding through central London?” asked my wife, with a slightly worried look in her eyes. Before I moved up to the north-east of England, I worked in London for seven years and used to regularly commute to the office by bike, so I knew what London riding was like. But that was more than a decade ago and in that time the level of political and financial investment in cycling in the ‘big smoke’ has been mind-blowing. Vast swathes of the city are now subject to a 20mph (30 kph) speed limit. There are Low Traffic Neighbourhoods everywhere. And the cycling infrastructure is like something that London cyclists could only have dreamt of when I worked there – hard segregated cycle routes, dedicated junctions, traffic lights with cyclist priority and waymarked cycling routes absolutely everywhere. An urban cyclist’s dream. But this isn’t Urban Cycling Union, this is Gravel Union, so who cares about the urban part of the ride?

As a gravel cyclist, the chances are you will need to ride to get to your nearest gravel trails and this may well be through a busy urban area. When your ride to the trails takes you through some of the busiest and most populous areas of London (including along Westminster Embankment, past Buckingham Palace and along High Street Kensington) and yet you get to the end of your cycling journey happy and relaxed, that says a lot about how great the cycling infrastructure is. Our Dutch and Belgian colleagues will probably be rolling their eyes at this, as for them it's the 'norm', but for the most cities in the UK outside of London this is something cyclists can only dream of!

Of course, I hadn’t quite banked on the hundreds of thousands of visitors who had poured into London to see the crowning of a new British monarch. I had planned my route to go straight down Pall Mall (the road that leads up to Buckingham Palace) and normally this is a great route with a segregated bike lane, but of course, when there is a coronation due twenty-four hours later, it was *quite* busy. I got some advice from the surprisingly helpful police and managed to bypass the worst of the crowds. 

My route through central London took in cobbled streets, gravel tracks through a number of royal parks and all manner of different types of bike lanes, not to mention quite a chunk of tarmac as I headed further south and west, but I eventually arrived safely in the leafy surroundings of Richmond Park for the start of my official Moloko gravel route.

I’d not visited Richmond Park since I was a toddler on a day trip with my grandparents, so it was great to be back. For London gravel riders based south of the river, Richmond Park is practically gravel riding mecca. The only issue is that at weekends, everyone and their dog heads for the park and the trails can be super busy. Luckily, I was there on a weekday and practically had the place to myself. The park is covered with a spiderweb of tempting-looking gravel trails, but there are some quite strict rules in place, one of which limits gravel riders to the Tamsin Trail (or adjacent park roads) and there are rumours of a 10 mph speed limit being enforced by park police on the trail (although I couldn’t find any written evidence of this). The trails are perfect – hardpacked gravel with some sandy and flinty sections, plenty of tree roots and just enough swoopyness to keep things interesting. With the sun shining down and the trails deserted, there is a small chance that I might not have stuck religiously to the speed limit if I’m honest.

With Moloko’s well-researched route guiding my every pedal stroke, I headed out of the park and down to the River Thames where I picked up the riverside path. Although not in the least bit challenging, this was traffic-free urban cycling at its finest. Again, I was fortunate to be there on a weekday as I suspect that at a weekend it would be pretty busy. The main path was wide and scenic with views across to unimaginably expensive (and flood-prone?) riverside homes, but every so often I would spot a sliver of singletrack deviating away from the official route, so spent some very happy time skipping between sections of “lets-see-where-this-goes” trails and the official route.

South-west London, when viewed on a map (or aerial images) is surprisingly green. Large areas of parkland, forest and even farmland (not to mention the ubiquitous golf course) can be found all over this part of the city, even if you stay within the M25 peripheral motorway. Through the region is a network of legal gravel riding trails and with Moloko’s help, my route was going to lead me along some of the best of them. After a short section of busy urban riding in the centre of Kingston upon Thames, I was soon back on the riverside path, passing expensive-looking houseboats en-route to Hampton Court Palace. 

While this kind of urban gravel riding might not exactly set your heart aflutter, once I had negotiated a short section of road and found myself in the town of Esher, things started to get a lot more gravelly and a huge amount for fun. In the late Spring in the UK we were fortunate enough to have long periods of dry weather, but the period that I was in London coincided with the good weather breaking and huge thunderstorms were forecast. As I reached Esher the heavens opened, albeit only for a matter of a few minutes, so I took shelter under some handily positioned oak trees. For a brief period of time, large raindrops bounced off the floor and I knew this would mean just one thing from a riding perspective – greasy trails. 

With some slightly unfortunate timing, I had arrived at the first heavily wooded section of my route just as the rain storm arrived and the previously dusty, root-entangled trails soon became crusted with a thin layer of slime. Having originally honed my off-road riding skills on the clay-slicked and rooty trails to be found near my parent's family home, I actually really relished the change in conditions and was soon grinning widely as I searched for the fine line between traction, control and speed on these unknown woodland paths. Within a matter of a few minutes, I was ensconced in what felt like a huge area of woodland. If you were dropped here by helicopter, there is no way you would know that you were still inside the M25 and so close to the very centre of the UK’s largest city. The woods were tranquil, full of wildlife and the short-lived storm cleared the air and left behind blue skies and sunshine.

The route alternated between sections of pristine gravel roads running between fields, farm tracks, woodland singletrack and sandy heathland, all tied together with small sections of urban riding. What the route lacked in significant elevation change, it more than made up for with variety. The lack of people and the sheer volume of great riding were both surprising. I had expected the ride to be significantly more urban too, but despite the proximity of some large urban areas and major roads, for big sections of the route, it felt as though I was in the middle of nowhere.

With 20 km under my belt before I’d even reached the start of Moloko’s route, by the time I reached the southern limit of the ride, my stomach was starting to grumble and finding some lunch became a priority. With perfect serendipity, as I rolled along a section of tarmac close to Esher again, I spotted a roadside board advertising an outdoor café which had set up next to a small park. With a decent coffee, freshly made toasted sandwich and a piece of cake ordered, I found a seat in the sunshine and decided again that gravel riding was the perfect way to explore somewhere new.

My return route saw me heading back north, passing through the enormous Bushy Park, complete with resident herds of red and fallow deer, through the leafy suburbs of Kingston upon Thames and back into Richmond Park. The second half of the Tamsin Trail was waiting for me here and it didn’t disappoint – flowy gravel roads and woodland singletrack wove a sinuous route around the perimeter of the park. It was surprising fast rolling and the warning signs, despite being somewhat over the top, made sense, as the trails were the ‘perfect storm’ combination of fast, loose and twisty.

After calling into see Alex from Moloko as I passed close to their base, I headed back towards central London. Riding in heavy traffic was quite a shock after having spent the majority of the day riding in the ‘wilderness’ of leafy Surrey. Luckily the traffic was pretty slow moving and despite having to rely on flimsy painted-white-lines type cycling infrastructure (rather than anything more bulletproof) I made it safely right through the heart of the city. Riding past The Ritz, through Piccadilly Circus and around Trafalgar Square might not be something that most gravel riders would consider fun, but it was significantly quicker and easier than I was expecting. Luckily as I reached the Embankment and got away from the hordes waiting to celebrate the royal coronation, I rejoined the segregated infrastructure and enjoyed a significantly safer and more pleasant ride back to where I was staying in east London.

While riding across the very heart of a huge city to get to the gravel trails might not be everyone’s idea of fun, the quality of the infrastructure and the sheer volume of cyclists now sharing the space meant it was a significantly more fun experience than you might expect. The juxtaposition of frenetic urban riding and weaving a route along peaceful woodland trails is part of what makes gravel riding so fun after all. While I won’t be moving down to the big city any time soon, for riders who are based there already, gravel riding utopia seems to be just a short ride away.

If you would like to find more of Moloko’s routes, you can check them out here