2014-07-07 - Le Tour de Essex - Watch the Tour stage 3 in the Essex countryside

just setting off from Brixton, should be under an hour, have pm'd fox my number and will post in this thread if i'm going to be late
see you all in an hour :)

Grab extra freebies for me if you can!! Sat in my office.. gutted!

No hangover!
I'm in. See you in hackney.

I am moving incredibly slowly and my brain is too stupid to work out where the road closures are but I will see you there/en route. Hopefully.

also I apologise in advance for my shoes.

I'm impressed you're up and about considering!

Ugh. I do have hangover. Lovely day though.

Coming across country with an OS map, should be emerging from a field near the pub :)

I got home about ten minutes ago after leaving mashtronaut and his brother to do the rest of the course in the Olympic Park. We arrived at Whipps Cross roundabout two minutes before the end of the stage and watched it on the big screen, which was perfect timing and made the effort between Moreton and there worth it!

If anyone fancies a post-ride drink you'd all be welcome at mine (just off Chatsworth Road) or the Elderfield Pub (recently featured in bike tag) :)

Great idea organising this, Pete, it was lovely. Fyfield was a nice, un-busy place to watch. I'd love to come round the Elderfield later, but I have a meeting now, which is why I needed to make a beeline back to London. I think the earliest I could be there would be around 9. I'll check at the pub in any case, and if you're not there I'll go home.

Lots to say, especially impressions on the ride back, but I'll need to post that later.

what a great day. started with a fab 10miles largely along the canal from Edmonton, then a crafty ride across several main roads - lots of it in the sunshine - to Fyfield where I consumed beer and hog-roast till the peloton whizzed by. I couldn't keep up with the greyhounds on the trip back, but Oliver held back to keep me company.

upsides: the weather, the company, the beer & the food but mostly the Epping road free from cars.
downsides: headwind going home, having to walk through Epping and the heavy traffic through Ponders End.

I did a good 60m today & enjoyed every bit of it.

big thanks to Pete for planning/leading.
special chappeau to (starfish&coffee?) who I had trouble keeping up with even though he was on a shopping bike!

That was ace! Thanks Pete, sorry I missed the ride out. I wish people would cheer you on and give you high 5s just for riding home all the time. I got a bit confused riding home and ended up going via Hackney Wick, which wasn't part of the plan, but it was quite fun. Apart from all the cars. Can't really complain when there were so many car free miles though :)

Oli, would love to find the energy to be at The Elderfield at 8.55pm in time to greet you... but.. more likely will be zonked...

thx for the ride Pete.. will look out for your next one... xx

I got to Epping, and yeah, being made to walk was pointless. "The road is still closed." "I know, that's exactly why I am riding on it."
Was out of leg juice by then anyway, so went to the tube station, where a very nice man let me on to go as far as Leyton, and I rode through the Olympic park and Vicky park to my flat.

I have proper cyclists tan lines, yay!

Good fun that. Lost everyone within a couple of miles of leaving Fyfield, but given Pete posted about being home a couple of hours ago, probably no bad thing. Tan lines here too. Also made to walk a good quarter mile stretch of the Epping torture route. Now for the real deal highlights.

Yep, that was fun. Thanks for coming everyone and making it more so.

Being high 5'd and cheered on the way back in was great. As TB says, I wish the run back into town was always like that :/

I just missed the ITV highlights and Eurosport only has 21km left now on theirs so will hopefully catch the ITV highlights later.

Cheers Pete great fun! Rode through city and embankment on the way home and I swear it was quiter than Epping!. Did get wet towards the end however lol.

I just watched that last 20km now on Eurosport and I couldn't believe how grey and depressing East London/the centre looked compared to sunny Essex!

Crowds were 5+ deep at that point too, I guess the crowds in town didn't hang around.

Thanks for a lovely time. Route was amazing, good company and great to have room to move (compared to inner London)...can only echo comments about Epping and the security. Rather than turning cycling into a spectator sport, make it more participatory by allowing people onto the roads.

Thanks Fox! Great initiative, lovely route, great choice of location. Thanks for sorting out the weather too.

So did the first group manage to ride the course all the way into London? I had to give up somewhere in Epping. Dodged a good few security guards who started shouting after me, but at some point it just wasn't that fun anymore.

Fortunately the shopper folds up small enough to stick in my shirt pocket so got on the tube without hassle.

I followed some people who looked like they knew what they were doing around a diversion off the main road in Epping - wasn't long before we could rejoin. Dunno why they were making a fuss in Epping when everyone else was fine with it. I only followed the route as far as Lea Bridge Rd though - although having actually looked at a map I sorted of did rejoin it, except by accident and after unnecessarily doing lots of Hackney.

I must get better at navigation.

I popped round the Elderfield briefly around 9, but nobody there (no worries).

I enjoyed the ride back, with the exception of having to walk through Epping (but then, they were de-rigging etc.).

What I liked the most, having been involved in organising quite a few Car-free Days, was how much of a CfD this really was. (OK, so the Tour is basically a massive car-valcade with some bike riders thrown in, but the 'road closures' remained in place long after they'd gone past.) Big budget and armies of marshals put our efforts to shame.

Down the A104 people were still sitting and chatting an hour or more after the race came through. I loved watching how people were enjoying the(ir) roads, often tentatively at first, and then properly. Stepping gingerly into the carriageway, then becoming bolder and realising it was OK to do that, to later enjoying full-blown ballgames on the roads, football, volleyball, etc.

There were huge gluts of people around each pub, all having a great party by the looks of it, spilling over into the carriageway in many places. It was really interesting to get back into Walthamstow and seeing very much town centre business as usual, i.e. not seeming as busy as further out of town, but with people walking in the carriageway and generally behaving so much more freely.

It was funny talking to people in Fyfield who suddenly knew so much about the race and who were asking all sorts of questions about it.

Anyway, a lovely day.

So did the first group manage to ride the course all the way into London? I had to give up somewhere in Epping. Dodged a good few security guards who started shouting after me, but at some point it just wasn't that fun anymore.

Dunno why they were making a fuss in Epping when everyone else was fine with it.

I rode all the way back with the exception of Epping. As I said above, they were de-rigging and they had installed various barriers across the course, so you wouldn't have been able to ride it, anyway.

Edit: Just realised that you were asking if anyone rode all the course. I didn't, as I was aiming for Clapton.

unnecessarily doing lots of Hackney.

There is no such thing. :)

Sadly didn't speak to any forumengers but had a great ride out en famille and watched the whole shebang with good beers...thanks for the suggestion Pete...

thanks for organising and leading Fox - great sunny ride out and exhilirating ride back in on closed roads. sorry I made everyone wait at the start...