27km A light night ride
Piccadilly Circus
Ride Overview
Lights, bike, action
Charles Dickens, a famous insomniac, spent many of his nights walking the streets of London. For cycling insomniacs, as well as for the innately curious, this ride will change the your perception and experience of the city. Enhanced by the lights of the night, the intensity and contrasts of the city are much more pronounced. The ride uses many of the city’s main thoroughfares, which are no fun to ride during the day, yet in the dead of night become almost traffic-free. The streets are all but deserted and there is a quiet, beguiling atmosphere until dawn begins to appear and the city gears up for another busy day. Combine the ride with a breakfast at one of the all night cafés on the route and you’ll have had the full nocturnal experience.
Route revised Jan ’23. NB Smithfield Meat Market has now moved to a new site away from the centre.
Ride Notes
Hyde Park Corner, has been called, ‘the busiest corner in the world’, and tonight it is absolutely still. There is not a car, bus nor van to be seen. For the sheer joy of it, I ride around the entire roundabout, knowing that I would never survive such a thing during the day.
Having completed my round, I turn into Piccadilly which is gloriously empty other than one night bus up ahead. A queue of cleaners and ancillary staff are wearily mounting its steps. I zoom down the small slope because there is no traffic to weave through.
Up Albermarle street to Berkeley Square, where instead of a nightingale, there are a couple of robins chorusing away from the branches of London’s most valuable tree. The London plane trees are brightly lit, their trunks pure white, and their branches shadowed and etched against the dark, night blue sky. The trees were planted in 1789 and are thought to be the city’s oldest plane trees. One has been recently valued at £750,000 by ‘The Capital Asset Value for Amenity Trees System’.
From Berkeley Square to Grosvenor Square, another cycling nightmare during the day, but at night you ride solo around its silent gardens, and then its into Oxford Street. Mayor Sadiq Khan has said, “On some days of the year it (Oxford Street), is the most polluted street in the world”. Research eight years ago by King’s College London found that NO2 levels had an average of 143 micrograms of NO2 per cubic metre when the World Health Organisation recommends a maximum of 40 micrograms per m3. But tonight, the air is as pure as city air can be.
Shop window displays are at their viewing peak during the night. They are full of glamour, fun, and theatre. You could say that they are the art galleries of the street, a dynamic and constantly changing 24-hour expression of commerce and creativity. New Bond Street is the best place in London for great shop window art; Among others, Dolce&Gabana, Rimowa, and Mulberry will persuade you stop and gaze.
Back into Piccadilly - which takes its name from a stretched starched collar, the ‘piccadil’, sold from a store along the street - and onto the circus, London’s neon centre. Lights flash, screens show paint-shopped and airbrushed faces on ginormous screens. According to a Digital Marketing company, it costs in excess of £4m a year to advertise in the ‘circus’.
Regent’s street is empty, as is Carnaby Street and Covent Garden. There’s a thrill of riding around pedestrian areas on two wheels without having to apologise or being told to dismount. I wander around the arcades of Covent Garden at will.
Up to Smithfield, where the smell of flesh permeates the air. Huge fridge lorries hum in parking bays and the Victorian wrought iron market hall is buzzing with porters carrying half sides of carcasses on their shoulders. Others are wheeling trolleys stacked high with boxes. Radios blast music, there’s shouting from inside the glaring fluorescent-lit interior. Every cut that you can possibly imagine is displayed. Birds unplucked, dead eyes stare from decapitated heads, intestines squiggle over stainless steel tops. Outside on a curb sit a huddle of tired men nursing steaming cups.
The City of London is more demure than the West End. Offices are dark, atriums are dimly lit and there are fewer shops to gaze at. However, around Bishopsgate there’s a fair amount of action. Street sweepers are busy, there’s a mass of police cars outside the police station with officers coming and going. Larger crowds than might be expected are filing into Liverpool Street Station and the two all night cafés are well populated. At 04.00 I decide that its time for an early breakfast and sit down to a full English in the Polo Bar.
The Thames is very dark, the bridges unlit, St. Paul’s and The Tower are mere shadows. In order to save power most public buildings and all the bridges along the river have their lights turned off at 02.00. Riding on the south bank is a strange experience - there are a few people walking fast, with their heads down, busy going somewhere in the dark. It’s eerie, mystical and rather exciting. Back across the river in Westminster, only the clock face at the top of the Elizabeth Tower is lit and the bells of Big Ben chime the quarter hour.
Through ghostly Victoria where there are some road works near the station and strong arc lights are beaming into a deep hole where orange coated men are wrestling with cables and drilling into concrete. The cacophonous sound is particularly violent at night.
To Sloane Square and up to Knightsbridge, where there’s a little more activity on the roads as delivery vans drop off large crates of milk, pastries and bread outside cafés. Night workers begin to stream out of offices. Bus stop queues are lengthening. Harrods is the last stop - it’s window displays never fail to entertain. Last week, in the daytime, the windows drew crowds of people who had come to watch an extraordinary automaton dance both freestyle and ballet. However the figures are still. I suppose even automatons need to rest.
Hyde Park Corner at 05.30 is becoming busy again and I do not repeat the antics of two hours ago. London is waking up - the speed of the traffic is fast, people are about. The streets are no longer mine. The solo ride on empty streets is done.
Ride Practicalities.
There are two ways to ride this route; before or after 02.00 a.m. Before, the illuminations of the city are spectacular, with the River and its bridges looking especially brilliant after the £31m spent on lighting up the stretch from Westminster to Tower bridge. However, there are more people about and there’s still plenty of traffic on the main routes. You certainly do not have Hyde Park Corner to yourself! After 02.00, most key illuminations are switched off, and the city takes on a more subdued and intimate air. The streets are all but deserted and there is a quiet, beguiling atmosphere. As dawn approaches the streets begin to be re-peopled as delivery vans bringing milk, fresh bread and buns to cafés.
Since the route follows main roads and thoroughfares, which are well lit, and usually well patrolled throughout the night , personal safety should not be an issue.
The ride can be ridden at any time of year, and the soft dawn of summer is as good a time as any, but travelling through the city during a deep, dark winter night gives a more vibrant and intensely illuminated experience.
START/FINISH: Anywhere along the route. The ride is described from Hyde Park Corner DISTANCE: 27km. TOTAL ASCENT: 249m TERRAIN AND SURFACES: Roads throughout - usually very quiet if not deserted FOOD (24 hours): Smithfield Cafe, 59 Long Lane, Bishopsgate; Polo Bar and Cafe, The Duck and Waffle, Brick Lane; Beigel Bake, MAINLINE TRAIN SERVICES: Victoria Station, Waterloo, Liverpool Street. Most trains don’t start running until after 05.30 LINKS TO OTHER RIDES: The Greatest City, Christmas Lights Ride (from December 2023)
Have you ridden this ride?
Share your experiences with the ‘Wheels’ community and tell us what you discovered/enjoyed on your journey. Feel free to add your comments below.