One of the highlights of my Easter was riding the London cobblestones with Julian Kirwan-Taylor, who devised the route, among others. There are 55 stretches of cobblestones still remaining on the roads of inner London, and the ride contrives to connect them all into one ride.
The route—which is shared on Julian’s website—starts in Shepherds Bush and runs clockwise via Paddington, Covent Garden, Farringdon and Stepney, before coming back through Wapping, Millbank, and Kensington. (Since it’s a circle you could join anywhere along it if you were planning on doing it.)
The benefit of starting at 8.30am on Easter Saturday was that there was very little traffic on London’s roads, and even Covent Garden was still quiet a bit after 9. It was busier on the westbound half, coming back.
Secteurs
For cycling fans, talk of cobblestones will conjure Paris-Roubaix, one of the toughest one day races in the cycling calendar, with its secteurs of cobbles, graded by difficulty. Obviously there’s nothing here a challenging as those cobbles, or as long. The ‘queen’ secteur is probably Wapping High Street, where the cobbles run for about half a mile, but all but the smoothest secteurs come with a bit of a jolt.
Cobbles were put in to London’s streets in the 18th century, because the earthen streets were disappearing into mud and filth (filth meant here quite literally). The cobbles, and the smaller sone setts, solved that problem, but they created another one. They made the streets very noisy, as horseshoes struck on stone, and threw up granite dust as well.
Wooden sets replaced them, which solved the noise problem but were treacherous and slippery when wet. Asphalt was first tried out in the City of London in 1869, but horse owners objected, and asphalt was only slowly introduced during the 20th century.
Horses
There’s a reminder of this transport history in west London, where many of the cobbled sections run through mews streets, where horses were once stabled. On the ride we passed two horsewomen washing their horses down after, I imagine, a canter in Hyde Park.
One of the pleasures of the ride is that the route is inevitably eccentric as it joins up the cobbled section. This means that you see London in a different way, as you emerge onto a familiar road from an unfamiliar angle.
There’s quite a lot of history as well. The route takes in Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, where dissenters such as John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe were buried, just outside of the limits of the City of London. Justin paused us at Millbank as well, at Tate Britain, previously the site of a jail that was a last staging post for prisoners about to be transported to Australia. They left from boats moored at Millbank Pier.
Delicatessen
And perhaps best, of course, a cafe stop at Terroni, the oldest Italian delicatessen in London. It opened in 1878, although a confusion with the order meant that I got a caffeinated cappucino instead of a decaf.[1]
Riding the route, and therefore thinking about the road surfaces under your wheels, makes you notice what you’re rolling over. Having given up installing cobbles a long time ago, transport planners are now installing setts a lot to reduce road speeds and manage junctions.
The pro-tip for cobbles, if you’re planning to do the route: ride in the highest gear you’re fluent in, while not holding the handlebars too tight, so the vibrations from the bike don’t all go up your arms. Though I once heard the British ‘hardman’ domestique Sean Yates say while commenting that the main trick with cobbles was to get over them as quickly as you could.
—-
The route is available on Julian’s website, Where My Wheels Go, as a (free) downloadable GPS file, along with a lot of other routes. If you’re thinking of doing it yourself, I’d recommend using a navigation device like a Garmin or a Wahoo to give you turn-by-turn instructions. You might want to start early on a Sunday morning to beat the traffic. And some experience of city riding is probably essential.
—-
[1] This reminds me of my second favourite story from cycling’s doping age. When the Italian cyclist Gianni Bugno—later banned for two years for the illegal use of caffeine—was told they’d found excessive levels of caffeine in a drugs test, he said he might have had a couple of extra espressos that morning.
“You’d have had to have 50 extra espressos to get that much caffeine in your system”, came the reply.
Around the edges 