North London Dirt Cycle Tour

21/07/18 - "North London Dirt", a 68 mile guided "gravel track" (off the roads) cycling tour around North East London to raise money for the st marys centre

On Saturday 21st of July Andrew and I put on a cycling event to raise money for the St Marys New Centre.

Andrew did far more of the initial organising but by the end of the day we both realised its almost as tiring putting on something like this as it would be to ride the 68 mile route we had set out.

Our original plan was to combine our shared lifelong love of cycling with a way to raise money for the New Centre. 
This snowballed as we decided to try and get some companies to help out with the event. This meant a cafe to start from (everyone needs a good coffee at the start) and some local breweries to provide some craft ales (everyone really needs a good beer at the end). And a number of cycling companies provided prizes for a draw at the end. The generosity of so many companies was really heart warming as they got behind the idea and provided far more than we expected.

The route itself consisted of 68 miles of both on and off road. We wanted to make it pretty challenging and show some of the amazing countryside and quiet places that exist not that far out of central London. It took a couple of dummy runs where we tweaked the route each time, and then we were happy to send it out.

Over 100 people signed up for the event and we even had some people who we had to turn away.

In the end I think it was a great success, despite a few grazes and nettle stings we saw nothing but happy riders coming in for a cold beer and some food at the back of the big church. People seemed more than happy to sit in the sunshine chatting about a long hot days riding. We've had loads of great feedback from people and are still enjoying seeing their photographs getting posted up on social media.