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The ride was pretty big - enormous I would say, in fact.
The size of the ride grew steadily over time. Ted's last year, he'd pushed it up to approaching 600. Now it's usually over 800, although probably slightly under 800 this year.
But it was hard to get a sense of the true scale of it, because everyone was crammed into the bike lanes
Only on a couple of sections at in the earlier stages. The only ride longer than this year was the very first, in 2009. Most of the ride was on open streets - went most of the way round the Outer Circle, for one thing.
and the ride was strung out a very, very long distance
That inevitably happens in places. The Met used to let us blast through junctions no matter what the lights said, because it's safer and less of an inconvenience to drivers over all. Then TFL took over and changed the rules. We have no choice. So junctions split things up and we have to find opportunities to gather them up later. Outer Circle was one such place, where the ride pretty much came back into one group. But managing junctions is a lot harder than it used to be, stretching the marshals to the limit.
while the main road was relatively free of traffic.
A fair number of the marshals are still forumengers and the rest are also very experienced cyclists, but the membership is much broader these days. Some are dedicated cyclists who put on some second hand vintage clothing once a year, others wear tweed every day and get on a bike once a year. So in some parts it's just better to use the segregated cycle lanes. Getting past Parliament and over Parliament Square (a tradition of the ride) is now one of those places, because the overall cycling infrastructure "improvements" actually make just using the main road worse when trying to manage 800 riders of greatly varying ability. Going down the main road and around three sides of Parliament Square with those same people would have been the smarter idea a few years ago. Not now.
One slightly over zealous marshal up ahead stopped shouting at me to get into the bike lane when I got a bit closer to him and he realised I wasn't on the ride itself. Not sure why, I wasn't dressed for the occasion!
He had 800 people to worry about. Cry me a river.
It looked a bit unpleasant being crammed in like that into the bike lanes
I was there with them. That's not how they felt. I know, because I spent the whole day with them and talked to them afterwards. The ride spread out fairly openly between where we joined the Embankment (close to Blackfriars) and Westminster Bridge, then bunched up again. Then became more open again as we headed through St. James and onwards.
and then being stuck at the hot and crowded junction at Westminster bridge, with the marshals only letting two or three dozen riders through at a time.
That's all they're allowed to do under the TFL rules. The riders don't complain as long as there are plenty of bits where they can ride more freely. They particularly don't complain in tourist spots like that bit because they get photographed a lot.
Is the ride not able to ride on the road?
As said, it mostly was on the open road.
I was on another ride recently (kidical mass) where the leader decided to bring the ride into the separated bike lanes instead of going on the road, which actually ends up causing more disruption as it strings the ride out far longer, blocking cross junctions. It slowed the ride down to an unbearable crawl and made for a pretty miserable, isolating, deflating part of the day.
I can't answer for somebody else's shit ride. This wasn't like that. Take a look at the route. In fact, we spent less time on segregated paths than the map indicates, because the Mall was rammed on the day so we skipped Birdcage Walk and did Horseguards and Admiralty Arch, then back to St. James.
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itsbruce
I passed by this the other day. Didn't realise it still existed. I never went but my partner went years ago, like more than ten years ago, possibly with @Wicksie, and some other older LFGSS ladies heads.
I passed by the ride on the embankment. The ride was pretty big - enormous I would say, in fact. But it was hard to get a sense of the true scale of it, because everyone was crammed into the bike lanes and the ride was strung out a very, very long distance, while the main road was relatively free of traffic. One slightly over zealous marshal up ahead stopped shouting at me to get into the bike lane when I got a bit closer to him and he realised I wasn't on the ride itself. Not sure why, I wasn't dressed for the occasion!
It looked a bit unpleasant being crammed in like that into the bike lanes and then being stuck at the hot and crowded junction at Westminster bridge, with the marshals only letting two or three dozen riders through at a time.
Is the ride not able to ride on the road?
I was on another ride recently (kidical mass) where the leader decided to bring the ride into the separated bike lanes instead of going on the road, which actually ends up causing more disruption as it strings the ride out far longer, blocking cross junctions. It slowed the ride down to an unbearable crawl and made for a pretty miserable, isolating, deflating part of the day.