Christmas Day Ride from Greenwich to Edgware Road and back

This is the 13th Christmas Day Ride, following a tradition started in 2002 by the late Barry Mason. In more recent years this ride was led by Francis Sedgemoor. Meet at 10am at the Cutty Sark Gardens, London SE10 9HT or at 11 am at the Southwark Needle SE1 2SY. As we will take a rather tortuous route to cycle to Edgware Road, we will be cycling about 16 miles to get there, which takes about 2 hours. However we will come back via a more direct route. Lots of people drop out along the way, but a 'hard core' will make it to Edgware Road. We may decide to stop at a pub en route, as there will be some places that are open on Christmas Day. We start off by following LCN Route 4 which takes us from Greenwich to Southwark. Unfortunately the new Deptford Creek Footbridge will not be finished until mid to late January, but we can still take a look at this new bridge. When we get to Southwark will will explore some Dickens' sites, such as the the grounds of Marshalsea Prison, where Dickens' father was imprisoned for debt. We then take a rather tortuous route, which allows us to see Trundle Street and Little Dorrit Street. We then cross the river at Southwark Bridge so that we can cycle past St Paul's Cathedral, City of London on our way to somewhere where we can peer in to look at the Clerk's Well, Clerkenwell, We can then cycle on to see some of Camden's interesting buildings, such as St Peter's Church, Clerkenwell, which used to be the main Catholic Church in England until Westminster Cathedral was consecrated in 1910, the Dickens Museum, Doughty Street, and the British Museum. We can use this ride to try out the Tavistock Place segregated cycle track and it will be interesting to to see what people think of it. We then cycle into Westminster to see Covent Garden, Neal Street, the Seven Dials and Leicester Square. This takes us on to the widest, longest and fastest cycle path in the whole of England - the Mall. We then cycle through Green Park, The Wellington Arch and Hyde Park, finishing for a meal at one of the Lebanese restaurants in Edgeware Road (like the Sennit) which open as normal on Christmas Day. After the meal, if there are enough of us left to cycle round the Regent's Park outer circle, we can do this, before cycling back to Greenwich. Previous years have seen upwards of 100 cyclists of all ages, genders, ethnicities and body-mass indices take part, and we usually get a few skiving Santas thrown in. Those wishing to come on the ride are asked to bring warm clothing, water, snacks, lights, basic tools and a spare inner tube in case you have a puncture (particularly important for this ride as there will no public transport on Christmas Day). Active parents are most welcome on the ride, provided that they are accompanied by at least one responsible child, and behave themselves. All should have at least basic road cycling experience.