London Edinburgh London
Ride dates: August 3-6, 2025
by Murray Tough

It’s Friday afternoon. LEL starts in just eight days. Our flight to London leaves tomorrow. I went for my last long ride and then started to disassemble my bike. The first thing I did was change gears to make removing the back wheel easy. That’s when my shifter jammed. I made a panic call to Trek Bikes. Even though they were slammed they said to bring the bike right away and they would take care of it. And they did. Whew!

We had a week to tour London and get over the jet lag. This was my taper week. I assembled my bike for some short rides around Kensington and Chelsea. It was good practice riding on the left and looking to the right. I needed to remember this even when I was sleep deprived and exhausted.

Bicycles are not allowed on the London Underground so I had to repack my bike when it was time to travel to the LEL start. This time, no problems.

It’s Saturday, the day before the ride. It’s registration day. Kathy is one of the registration volunteers so she dutifully checks my ID and hands me my ride package that has my drop bags, frame badge and other essentials. Next, I pick up my tracker and battery bank. Plugging devices in at the controls is forbidden so riders can rent a battery bank that can be exchanged at every control for a fully charged one. That is just one indication of how well organized this ride is.

I had two drop bags to fill. Before leaving Victoria I had carefully planned and sorted what was going in each bag. The bags had clean socks and clean bib shorts, and a supply of energy bars and sports drink powder. There was a strict 2.5kg limit on each bag. My Richmond bag was overweight. I returned to my room and agonized over what to take out. I eventually got there, and my bags were dispatched to their respective controls.

Around this time, we all received an ominous email from the ride organizer. Subject: Storm Floris – rider warning – PLEASE READ. The message said that extremely high winds and heavy rain were expected. Winds on the exposed high ground along the route were forecast to be 100 km/hr.

“If necessary we will declare an extreme weather emergency.” In which case they will hold us at a control until it is safe to continue.

Day 1:

Riders were leaving in waves at 15-minute intervals. My assigned start time was 11:30 AM. It was already hot but heat was not going to be the story of this ride. We wound our way north on a series of country lanes towards Cambridgeshire. We passed through picturesque villages with stone fences, stone churches and houses with thatched roofs. They could have been scenes from Midsomer Murders. We skirted around the city of Cambridge to our first control at Northstowe. At each control we were fed a hot meal that included vegetarian options and LEL’s famous apple crumble with custard. There were always stacks of apples, oranges and bananas.

I passed a few riders on my way to Northstowe. I called out, “Passing on your left,” like you do. I did this two or three times before it dawned on me that I was riding on the left and passing on the right.

With a banana in my pocket, I set off for the most challenging stage of the day. The Fens. The Fens is a vast marshland that was drained centuries ago for agriculture. For me this meant 100 km of pancake flat riding. As I entered a village in this vast plain, I caught a glimpse of a sign that I was sure said, “Home of the Mountain Rescue Team.” No, really? I must have misread it. It would be the Canadian equivalent of having a mountain rescue team in Regina. When the ride was over I looked it up, just to confirm that I was not hallucinating. It turns out it is a charity helping disabled and disadvantaged people. I hadn’t taken leave of my senses…neither had the villagers.

There weren’t as many towns and villages on this stage. The endless flat wasn’t the big problem. The problem was there are no trees to block the wind. I fought crosswinds and headwinds all the way north. Halfway through, I was able to join up with another rider of similar ability to me. We took turns on the front, changing places every 5km all the way to the control in Boston. As a pair, we made good time despite the headwind.

Another hot meal and then back on the road to the first sleeping control in Louth. This stage was only 55km through the Lincolnshire Wolds. I found contradictory definitions of “wolds” but it was rolling hills through a mixture of farmland and forest. I started the stage at nightfall. By the time I left the flats, it was dark. In the dark, I had no sense of the changing topography. I looked down at my speed and wondered why I was going so slowly before I realized that my elevation was 50m. For the previous 100km I had not seen anything above 5m. I wound through the Wolds on rolling hills without seeing any of them.

I made good time to Louth. With the pending storm I decided to press on to the next control at Hessle. After a hot meal, of course. I knew Hessle would be the busiest of the controls but it was on the north side of the Humber. To get there, I had to cross the Humber Bridge; a suspension bridge a little over 2km long. With the approaching storm, I decided it would be a good idea to get across it while the wind was still light. If I couldn’t get a bed at Hessle, I was prepared to continue through the night to Malton.

The bridge crossing was peaceful but my view of the world was limited to the well-lit bike path in front of me. As I came off the bridge, there were volunteers waiting to direct me to the control. I got my card stamped had a meal and went in search of a bed. Luckily they had one and I was able to put my head down for a short sleep. I didn’t sleep well. I quickly got cold and couldn’t get warm again. With fewer than three hours of sleep, I got up, had breakfast and set off.

Day 2:

My goal for the day was Brampton, 276km north. The distance was manageable but there would be lots of hill climbing. The course would take us across the Pennines, the backbone of Britain. It rained on and off all morning as I rode to the first control of the day at Malton. It wasn’t the Yorkshire Dales but the scenery still looked like a setting for “All Creatures Great and Small” with its rolling hills and lush fields separated by lines of hedges. There were stone barns on some of the farms, often side-by-side with modern buildings.

I arrived at Malton around 11:00 AM. I got my control card stamped and went for lunch. As I was getting my food, the ride organizers announced that the ride was on hold for a minimum of 4 hours due to the extreme weather. Any rider leaving the control would be disqualified. I could do with some sleep so a four-hour hold was manageable. I ate my lunch and went to the gymnasium where the beds, i.e. air mattresses, were set up. I got an extra blanket—I was not going to be cold this time. I went to sleep thinking about where I would aim for now that I had had some extra sleep.

Four hours came and went with no apparent activity. It was sunny outside but I could hear the wind howling. I went back to sleep. I woke to a quiet commotion. People were getting up, murmuring and staring at their phones. I did the same and learned that the ride was now cancelled. We were to stay at the control until morning and then start riding south.

There are now about 750 of us at a control that was designed to sleep 350. Somehow the ride organizers were able to accommodate all the extra riders. More importantly, 750 riders needed to be fed dinner this evening and breakfast in the morning. We were told that dinner would be ready at 10:00 PM. When dinner was ready, the lineup encircled the dining area and spilled out into the hallway. But everyone was fed.

We would be allowed to leave at 7:00 AM. The plan was send us off in waves every 3 minutes. They asked that only the fast riders go out in the first groups. I’m not a fast rider so I decided to aim for a 7:30 start. Having slept all afternoon, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to sleep through the night. But I did.

Day 3:

It’s sunny and windy. It looks like we will be dealing with strong crosswinds over much of the course. With some short exceptions, the southbound course retraces the northbound course. From Malton, it is about 70km back to Hessle. I’m well rested, well fed and feeling strong. Back through the rolling hills of Yorkshire only this time in sunshine. At one point I’m cruising along at a good pace using my aerobars. I’m protected from the crosswind by a tall hedge. I’m enjoying the ride. Then there is a gap in the hedgerow. Wakey, wakey! I wasn’t in danger of crashing but the sudden blast of crosswind really wobbled my bike. I stopped using my aerobars on the faster descents—a little wobble when my speed is 25 km/hr was no big deal but at 50, it could be a disaster.

Douglas Qi on the Humber Bridge, Day 3

At the Hessle check-in, a volunteer was handing out pins that said, “London Floris London”. I met up with another BC rider, Douglas, in Hessle. We rode south together from there on. Crossing the Humber River was exciting. My sailor’s eye judged the wind on the river to be about 25 knots (40-50 km/hr) at water level. Up on the bridge it would have been well over 50 km/hr. Douglas said my bike was leaning over several degrees as we traversed the long suspension bridge in the howling crosswind. Passing each of the towers was an experience! The crosswind suddenly stopped only to restart just as suddenly on the other side of the tower.

As we wound our way south through the Lincolnshire Wolds, I got to see all the sights I had missed in the dark the day before. The winding course gave us headwinds and tailwinds but mostly crosswinds. We reached the control at Boston. Now we had the Fens to cross.

We set out at around 7:30 PM. It was still windy but we expected that the wind would ease up after sunset. A gibbous moon rose in the southern sky before sunset. We followed this beacon for the rest of the night. As we pedalled our way across the Fens, we passed a French rider. Some time later, he passed us. This process repeated several times before he joined us. The three of us continued on as tight group as we sped through the darkness across the Fens. We each took turns on the front without ever talking about it. We laughed about the “big” hill we had to climb to get to the top of a dyke. We had been riding along at 3m elevation below the dyke. When got to the top we had doubled our elevation to 6m! Even Saskatchewan is not this flat.

As hoped, the wind died down at sunset. We arrived at the control in Northstowe before midnight. We finally introduced ourselves to our French friend. He described our ride across the Fens as “rythmique”. We went through the ritual of getting our control cards stamped even though it was no longer useful—except as a souvenir of the ride that wasn’t to be. Douglas and I agreed to meet for breakfast at 8:00 AM. There was no point in rushing because there were no longer any time constraints.

Day 4:

Right from the start, day 4 was a struggle. It shouldn’t have been. We both got a reasonable night’s sleep and a good breakfast. But we had the accumulated fatigue from yesterday’s race across the Fens without having the euphoria of a successful LEL to motivate us.

We passed through more quaint villages, wound our way up and down hills and rolled along country lanes. The highlight of the day was the ride through Cambridge. The route took us right through the heart of the city and past the iconic King’s College, which was founded in 1441. Construction of the famous chapel began in 1446 but took two generations, and three successive kings, to complete.

We stopped at the final control in Henham and took our time over lunch. Only 43km to go. It all felt a bit anticlimactic. We arrived at Writtle mid afternoon. Kathy was one of the volunteers on the road directing us into the finishing area!

And that was it. We collected one last stamp in our incomplete brevet cards and received a medal that we had not truly earned.

The next LEL is not until 2029.