The genie is out of the bottle.
Thousands of cyclists are riding around London in peace and safety and with barely a car in sight.
Families pedal down the middle of some of the city’s main thoroughfares. The snarling traffic on Cannon Street has been replaced by smiling families. It’s a scene repeated along a closed-road loop of eight miles.
The space outside St Paul’s Cathedral has been given over to a festival. As the cyclists queue at a stewarded pedestrian crossing, a temporary fence blows over, and in scenes never before witnessed in London traffic, everyone laughs. Compare and contrast.
The Team UK Youth car passing over London Bridge was the only traffic of note. There will be no quarter given on London’s streets tomorrow, but handshakes will follow.
The RideLondon Freecycle has got a weekend of cycling in the capital off to a perfect start. Check back throughout the weekend when we’ll bring you previews and reports of the RideLondon-Surrey100 sportive, and the RideLondon-Surrey Classic professional road race.
