After what has felt like six months of non-stop rain, the fact the North London Dirt course was “relatively” free-from mud is testament to the skill of route-meisters (and event organisers) Philip and Andrew Diprose. They probably wouldn’t claim the credit for the wonderful blue sky and hot sunshine which magically appeared from late morning onwards, but the combination of sunshine and great trails helped generate the happy buzz which seemed to permeate this year’s event. Olly recently made his annual trip down to the Big Smoke to take part in NLD 2024. If you’d like to find out how he got on, then read on.

“I don’t suppose any of you have a seven-speed quicklink do you?” asked the slightly stressed-looking rider, his bike lent up against a council rubbish bin. It’s been *quite* a long time since I last ran seven-speed on any of my bikes - probably the early 1990s in fact. So, it was pretty incredible to see someone still using it on a big day out like North London Dirt. Although we didn’t have a compatible quicklink with us, we soon figured that it was possible to just rejoin the chain using a chaintool, so the potentially ride-ending mechanical was a relatively easy fix in the end. The camaraderie between riders on the NLD, mainly due to the event being run on a non-competitive basis, means there’s always someone willing to offer a hand in the event of a mid-ride crisis.

“I’ve got you a black coffee, hope that’s OK?” said my friend Matt as I rolled through the entrance to the St Mary’s Centre venue, which hosts the annual start/finish for the NLD. Despite the fact that Matt had travelled from leafy Surrey, more than 90 minutes away by train and bike, he’d still managed to arrive at the sign-on area more efficiently than me and I’d only had to ride 10 minutes up the road from where I was staying. “I’ve got you a black coffee, hope that’s OK?” said my friend Ian two minutes later, as we met him near the sign-on table. He had got up at 3am and travelled to the event from the wilds of Norfolk and had also beaten me to the start. 

Suitable caffeinated, we had a quick stroll around the displays from Fairlight Cycles, POC and Ortlieb, chatted with everyone that we bumped into that we hadn’t seen so far this year (which seemed to be lots of people!) and then headed out. Fitting neatly with the its-not-a-race ethos of the event, riders could head out any time between 6.30am and 9am. Although the start field was relatively small at a completely-sold-out 300 riders, the joy of a flexible start time was that at no point did any of the trails feel overcrowded.

The slightly unusual thing for the NLD is that it starts bang in the middle of a leafy London suburb. Unlike other events which deliberately site their ‘event village’ adjacent to some amazing trails, with NLD you know you’re going to have to do some urban miles first. This isn’t a bad thing though – it fits very neatly with the “welcome everyone” ethos of the event as many of the riders are able to arrive by bike or train+bike, so reducing the reliance on car ownership; it means riders can experience more of the St Mary’s Centre (which they help fund each year with the income from the event) and for non-Londoners, it means we get to see a part of the city we wouldn’t normally experience. 

Despite its urban start, the Diproses do a great job each year of funnelling riders out of town via an interesting route. This year was no exception, with a combination of minor roads, segregated bike paths, urban cut-throughs and little-known public rights of way. The early highlight was the short-but-sharp climb up to Alexandra Palace. At a nosebleed inducing 89m above sea level, there are normally great views available as you arrive at the top of the ridge on which ‘Ally Pally’ is situated, but a foggy start to the day meant views were a little more limited when we passed through. 

In total we rode about 20 km before we hit the first proper off-road section, but when we got there, it was a proper ‘doozy’ of a trail – varying in width from singletrack to 4x4 trail with a lightly polished clayey surface and a number of swampy sections to hip-wiggle around. There were plenty of audible giggles and the occasional screech of hastily grabbed brakes as riders surfed their way along the trail, off-road skills rapidly deployed after being muted on the paved opening section.

After the initial section of off-road trail, a somewhat familiar NLD route pattern was soon in place. We alternated extravagantly verdant off-road trails with sections of minor road, shared-use trail and gravelled farm tracks. What was quite incredible was how rural the route felt, despite us still being inside the M25 (the orbital motorway the encapsulates London) at this point. It frequently seemed as though we were in the middle of a rural idyl despite the fact that as the crow flies, we were only 30 km from the Houses of Parliament!

Creating a slightly discombobulated feeling for the participants is something the Diproses seem to specialise in when planning the route for NLD. One minute you might be blasting around a beautifully manicured grass-up-the-middle gravel track, the next you’re seeing roadside signage advertising an upcoming motorway service station. The ‘urban hinterland’ ethos of NLD runs deep and each year, riders are treated to a cornucopia of unexpected delights. We’ll gloss over the short section of concrete road leading to the malodorous landfill site and composting facility near Junction 22 of the M25 and remember the tiny bright blue flowers fluttering in the breeze as we screamed along a hardpacked field-edge trail.

Somewhere beyond km 30, the Diproses transported us into a different world. An ancient sunken ‘holloway’ trail, lined with oak, dappled sunlight casting kaleidoscopic patterns on the firm gravel surface. In an instant, speeds rocketed, flinty pebbles ricocheted off tubeless tyres and wide grins spread across the faces of the riders. It was sections of trail like this that made the six-hour drive down from the Gravel Union UK office worthwhile. It was also the point where Ian got the first puncture of the day. Yin and Yang.

Until this point, apart from a very light bespeckling of shins, the trails had been remarkably dry. As the sun started to burn through the early morning grey fug, you could practically feel the mood of our ragtag peloton lifting further. Unnecessary layers were removed and packed away. Pale skin was exposed to levels of Vitamin D it had not experienced since the previous summer. It was so bright it made you squint, a feeling akin to having been shut in a dark cellar all winter and then suddenly released onto a desert island. 

Of course, five minutes later, the realisation hit that a few minutes of glorious sunshine was not going to undo the misery of the previous six months of monsoon and we were met with wall-to-wall puddles. It was interesting watching the approach of different riders to the enormous puddles. Some threw caution to the wind and sailed straight through, minor bow waves pushed out in front of them. Others tiptoed around the edges, hoping to avoid besmirching their box-fresh white socks. Some riders had a slightly resigned air, as though riding through hub-deep puddles was the lot of a British gravel rider. Others’ expressions displayed confusion and disappointment, as though they expected the trails to have instantly dried up. 

“Do you think I’m just jinxed with tubeless tyres?” asked Ian with a combination of disappointment and frustration apparent in his voice. We were deep in the middle of Hoddesdon Park Wood, a beautiful broadleaf forest with a vehicle-width gravel trail running through the centre of it. The dense foliage meant there were some patches where the sunlight hadn’t penetrated and the clayey soil, high water table and popularity of horse riding in the area meant some of the trails were impressively ‘clarty’. As we stopped to try and encourage (unsuccessfully) the air to stay inside Ian’s rear tyre, we were part way up a short, slithery climb. We had just descended at high speed, with a mix of bravado and foolhardiness known only to mountain bike riders transplanted onto gravel bikes for a day. With enough speed (and a large dollop of good luck) it was possible to carve a route straight through the middle of the worst of the mud, but the high-pitched giggles and occasional yelps that were being carried through the forest behind us, made us realise that although not everyone was as successful as we had been at navigating the swampy descent, they all sounded like they were having a fun time anyway. 

Sadly, despite our best combined efforts, Ian’s rear tyre was not having any of it, so he had to resort to fitting a tube – a messy job at the best of times and even worse when you’re deep in a fairly muddy wood! Fortunately, the mid-way stop was only a few km further down the road where Madison had a service team in action. With his bike retro-fitted with tubes front and rear, bottles topped up with rehydrate solution courtesy of event sponsors OTE Sports and a supermarket lunch acquired and inhaled, we were soon ready to hit the trail again. 

A good chunk of the afternoon’s riding was alongside the River Lea, which at this point on its course is essentially a canal. As it was a (finally!) sunny Saturday afternoon, there were plenty of people out enjoying time on or alongside the water. Stand Up Paddleboarders. Canal boat fans. Kayakers. Dog Walkers. Even a couple of horse riders. But the highlight was a family out for a leisurely ride along the gravelly tow path. They parted ways to let the group I was riding in pass, parents on one side, small child on the other. As we passed, the small child seemed to smile and look on in admiration and we probably all felt like cycling superheroes for a fraction of a second. It was only afterwards that I realised the rider in front of me was Petra Wiltshire, former World Masters downhill MTB champion. I’m not sure whether the small child realised they were genuinely looking in admiration at a cycling superhero?

Looking back at my image stash now, I suspect that I must have been suffering from sunshine-induced madness as I have evidence that we rode straight past an open ice-cream van at one point. Luckily, we were rewarded soon after with some fantastically fast and flowy woodland singletrack, courtesy of the trails of Epping Forest. We’ll gloss over the Velcro/Teflon-like tendancies of the steep, rooty climb leading up into the forest mind you. No grip when you needed it most and like being sucked into a bog when just when your legs were screaming their loudest.

After exiting the dappled tranquillity of the forest, it seemed just a few short minutes before we were dumped unceremoniously back into urbanville. Concrete underpasses, graffiti, evidence of homelessness – all a bit of a shock after the earlier rural riding, but there was some surprisingly good riding nonetheless.

If I was just going to use one image to sum of the characteristics of NLD it would be this one. A narrow strip of hardpacked singletrack, crossing the grassy Wanstead Flats with the high-rise developments Canary Wharf and the City of London in the background. The hinterlands of the UK’s capital city would not make an obvious place to come and search for gravel nirvana, but yet again the Diproses came up trumps and the route of the 2024 NLD was a triumph. 

Image courtesy of @lloydjwright

A final stretch of the route took us initially past the Lee Valley Velopark, home to many of the events in the 2012 London Olympics before some urban backroads deposited us back at the St Mary’s Centre, knackered but happy! Beer first or pizza first? That was our tough choice at the finish line. Actually (and perhaps slightly strangely), we chose photo first. The team from Fairlight Cycles had offered all the participants a finisher’s photo and their photographer captured this brilliant one of my little group of gravel-loving buddies. 

Thanks to these two legends for creating yet another astoundingly fun day out on a gravel bike.

With freshly cooked wood fired Neapolitan pizza in one hand and freshly poured beer from @magicrockbrewing in the other, the afternoon was topped off by chatting with the group of riders mulling around at the finish line. The sunshine and the post-ride buzz combined perfectly to cultivate an atmosphere more akin to a slightly grubby outdoor party than the end of a cycling event. All that remained was to swing an incredibly well-filled musette of goodies over one shoulder and cycle gently off home.

Is it too early to start dreaming about next year’s North London Dirt yet?