🚴‍♂️ London Wales London 2026

All week I watched the weather in anticipation of the London Wales London Audax ride at the weekend. I’m fortunate to have a real-life weatherman living in my street, so on Wednesday I messaged him to see what he thought. The news wasn’t good. Our spell of sunshine was going to be replaced by a band of rain moving up through England. I’d figured that by doing the ride at around 12mph including stops, the same speed as last year, the rain should hit around 5pm and last until midnight. The temperature looked to be much warmer, not dropping below around 10°C, but I wasn’t sure what the net effect would be given that I was likely to be sopping wet through the middle of the night.

I took Friday off to relax ahead of an early start on Saturday, but ended up spending a lot of it in Bedford, trying to work out how to get in contact with my bank as we attempted to complete the purchase of a used car. When we got back, I spent Friday afternoon prepping my bike, charging all of the devices and making sure I knew where all my bits of kit would be — including, sadly, my rain jacket and spare pairs of waterproof socks and gloves. I slept well, going to bed around 10pm, not as nervously excited as last year, as I thought I knew what was in store. The alarm went off at 3:45am, giving me 45 minutes to gather myself, get dressed, have a small bite to eat and hit the road.

I guess no two rides are the same, but the contrast between last year and this one was so stark. After meeting up in Chesham with Dave W and Dave P from our cycling club, we got to the start in time to meet Ian, Bruce and Dave C, pick up our brevet cards, and for me have a second breakfast of jam on toast with a cup of tea.

The ride started really well and I was feeling great. The 61km to the Islip control is a fun ride as there are so many cyclists all together, riding in groups, getting into rhythms, chatting, and passing each other. I spent a good chunk of this first stint with Ed, someone that I rode with almost the whole way last year and one of the strongest riders that I knew on the ride. Before we knew it, we were parking our bikes, getting our brevet cards stamped and tucking into the superb third breakfast of sausage baps, hash browns, croissants, bananas and much more besides. Ian wandered in, a while after everyone else, looking flustered and unhappy. He wasn’t feeling well; he had fallen off the back of the group and seemed daunted by the prospect of completing the ride.

We started to feel as though we had stopped for a bit too long. As the control emptied out, Ed said he was going to push on, and this was the last we saw of him. We left Ian at the control as he was only starting to tuck into his food and we didn’t want to burn another twenty minutes or so. As we walked back to our bikes, Dave P told us that he had a weird noise in his wheel. Cycling away, we heard it immediately — a loud, hollow clanking sound that seemed to emanate from his front wheel rim.

I was now with Dave P, Dave W and Bruce. Dave C had told us way before the event that he was going to be a ‘full value’ rider¹ and would go at his own pace, so we didn’t wait for him. He suggested a coffee stop in Stow-on-the-Wold, but given that we had to make a mandatory stop in Tewkesbury we decided to push on. We made good progress, albeit with Dave P’s wheel clanging getting worryingly louder and more frequent as we went. I’ve been through Tewkesbury three times on different Audax rides, and every time I’ve stopped at the excellent Coffee #1. As we parked up and tumbled over each other to get to the toasted sandwiches, crisps, cakes and coffee, Dave P decided to roll to the local bike shop to get a diagnosis for his clanging, and hopefully a fix. As we sat down and waited for our food, Ian turned up looking much, much happier; it was one of my highlights of the day to see that he’d found his mojo and had made such good progress. Dave P returned and the news wasn’t good. The hub of his front wheel had failed and was dangerous to ride. Despite their best attempts to source a part or even a new compatible wheel, the bike shop ultimately couldn’t help, so it was the end of his event.

The three of us pressed on through to Ross-on-Wye and up Symonds Yat, the steepest climb of the day. As we waited for each other at the top, the rain started and quickly got heavier. We stopped to put on our wet weather gear. Then, in a village a few miles before Chepstow, Bruce’s pedal suddenly broke off, leaving the spindle sticking out of the crank. We had already taken a lot of time on this leg with various stops and faffing, so I was anxious to push on. We abandoned Bruce, who looked gutted to not be able to continue.

We wandered into the Chepstow control, which was damp underfoot and filled with sodden cyclists. There was talk in the air of abandoning the ride, given how long the rain was set to continue. I grabbed a bowl of delicious stew and pondered my next move. I was tempted to concede defeat, but also realised that I felt better than I did at this point last year, when the stop at Chepstow was the thing that breathed life back into me. Ian’s thoughts seemed to have returned to how he wasn’t feeling well earlier in the day. He was concerned about getting stranded somewhere from which it wouldn’t be easy to recover, which was totally understandable. So he decided to head to the station and get the train home.² The ever-smiling and positive Dave C turned up as I pondered what to do, and he told me he was going to keep pedalling. It was 100km to the next control at Lambourn, which felt doable to me. I decided I was going to give it a go too.

At this point I swapped my gloves and socks over to my Sealskinz ‘waterproof’ ones that I’d packed in anticipation of the rain. It was a little chilly as I got back in the saddle, but I figured that pedalling and the climb over the old Severn Bridge would soon warm me up. Dave W seemed to be having his own doubts and wanted to tackle the next bit on his own, at his own pace, which was also understandable. We said our goodbyes and I headed off.

Two minutes up the road I realised that my heart rate monitor was no longer working. It’s not an essential part of the ride, but I do use it to measure my level of exertion, which feeds into my weekly TrainerRoad training plan, so I tried to get it restarted. After messing about with it for five minutes I realised I was wasting even more time and decided I would just go without it for the rest of the ride.

Crossing the Severn Bridge in a torrential downpour was quite an experience. The route file prepped by the organiser, Liam Fitzpatrick, was filled not only with turn-by-turn directions but also points of interest. As I got to the other side of the bridge, my Garmin computer beeped at me to inform me that there was a scenic photo opportunity here, which cracked me up as visibility of anything beyond the bridge was almost zero.

My ride to Lambourn was great, despite the torrential rain. On this leg, I realised that one of the best things about being on your own is that you can stop for a number one at any time without worrying that you’re going to be left behind or that you’re holding up your group. I was well hydrated and stopped exactly when I needed to. Eventually the rain started to ease, and as the clouds became less dense it began to get lighter — just before it started to get dark again. I was sopping wet, but I knew from the forecast that the rain was unlikely to return and this lifted my mood. Malmesbury turned up at just the right time, with its convenient Co-op just slightly off route, as I needed to fill up a water bottle and was craving a Mars Bar. I called home, and my lovely wife insisted that if I needed picking up at the end of the ride I should give her a bit of warning and she’d be there. I’d planned to ride back from the finish in order to bag my longest ride ever and hoped I wouldn’t want — or need — to call.

Further on up the road I needed something savoury, and decided to pull up outside a 24-hour Esso garage. I grabbed two small tubs of ready salted Pringles and stood outside, eating them like an animal, and greeting another rider who pulled up a few minutes after me. Long-distance cycling is weird in that you often feel hungry and nauseous at the same time.

Last year I rolled into the Lambourn control with three friends and knew I was starting to struggle. Back then I was cold as I hadn’t packed enough warm clothes. This time I felt okay-ish — I thought — but given my savoury stop I just couldn’t work out what I wanted to eat. The staffed controls on this ride are simply fantastic, with so many things for people to choose from, but this left me pondering whether I wanted a bowl of chilli and rice, or rice pudding with tinned peaches. I went with the latter, returning for a second helping. It was the last substantial thing I would eat on the ride. Looking back at the selfie I took at the control, I think I can see in my face that I was worn out. But I’d broken the back of the ride and didn’t have that far to go.

It was only 65km to Henley, the penultimate control. I wandered out to my bike and used the torch function on my phone to illuminate my handlebar bag as I fished out an extra not-quite-as-damp layer to fend off the cold, and swapped my spent rear light for a freshly charged spare. As I was putting on my gilet, two riders arrived with a story of taking a 45km detour; somehow they took a wrong turn and only realised when they saw that they had ended up back in the Cotswolds. Wishing them luck, I did my bag up and pushed off, not realising that I’d left my phone and depleted rear light on the wall.

This next leg scared me, and I keep having flashbacks about it. Most of the route was spent on country lanes in the middle of nowhere, the only lights for miles around seemingly being the ones on my bike. The lack of rest had caught up with me. The few metres of road ahead of my bike were hypnotic as I rolled along, and I found myself hallucinating and falling asleep on the bike. A bizarre semi-lucid narrative entered my head like a dream I couldn’t quite make sense of. I tried stopping, slapping myself in the face and singing, but I found I couldn’t make the words with my voice beyond a couple of lines. A couple of times I caught myself as I drifted off, heading to the other side of the road or towards the verge. I passed a bus shelter and considered stopping, but I was worried that I was already way behind schedule and that if I sat down I may not get up for hours. I learned later that long-distance cyclists call these ‘the dozies’ and it’s a common challenge that people have to deal with. About 10km from the end of the leg, another cyclist rolled up behind me. I told him what had been happening and asked if I could ride with him and chat for a while. This seemed to do the trick, nursing me to the 24-hour petrol station that served as the next control.

At this point I realised that I had left my phone in Lambourn. Another cyclist kindly lent me his so that I could call the organiser’s number and let them know; he handed it over to me with the instruction: “Whatever you do, please don’t accidentally call my wife.” Good advice at half past three in the morning. I wasn’t hopeful about getting my phone back as the previous control had closed around 20 minutes before. But, to my amazement, Liam told me that both my phone and light had been found and would be taken to the finish. “You have to make it to the end now!”

Fortunately I had my bank card with me as a backup. I wandered in, bought a large mocha from the Starbucks machine and went and sat with the other riders in the small seating area. After I finished my drink, I saw that the others around me still had plenty of things to consume and would be there for a while. I decided to have a nap, asking them to wake me up before they pushed off again. I went straight to sleep.

Before I knew it, I was getting a gentle shake of the shoulder to wake me up. I think I must have been asleep for 20 minutes or so, but this seemed to do the trick. We only had 30km to get to the finish. Dawn would be breaking soon and I figured that my internal clock wouldn’t be trying to drag me down into sleep again. I seemed to find a new lease of life, overtaking cyclists as I went and catching up with a lady who was going at a similar pace to me. There were a couple of climbs remaining, but I welcomed them; pumping the pedals standing up was much less likely to be something that I could fall asleep doing than rolling downhill or along a flat. I finally made it back to the finish at around 5:45am, almost three hours later than the year before but still with three hours to spare until the official cut-off time. My phone and light were waiting at the desk. I was so grateful to be there, having made it round in one piece, amongst the friendly and sympathetic faces of the wonderful volunteers. I called my wife and took up the offer of a toasted cheese sandwich while I waited for her to collect me.

I recently heard that everything in life is either a good time or a good story. This event felt like both. The organisation, the food, the caring volunteers staffing the controls all through the night, and the wonderful company of old and new friends all attempting the same crazy adventure made it something I won’t forget. I’m not sure I’ll tackle another 400km ride in a hurry, but I may join the volunteers next year.

Here’s a time-lapse video of my Strava ‘Flybys’, tracking every cyclist with a public route on Strava that I passed by during my ride, sped up 720 times. It’s mesmerising to watch. See if you can spot the two riders on their detour back to the Cotswolds!

1. One of the things I love about Audax is that you get a simple ‘yes/no’ result at the end. There are no published times, and no prizes for riding faster. Those people who take close to the full allocated time, 27 hours in the case of a 400km event, are affectionately called ‘full value’ riders. ↩
2. Later we discovered that he met up with Bruce again at the station, so they had each other for company as they shared a train ride home. ↩