Can you go for a gravel ride in London? Hank and Conor find out

Conor Dunne and James 'Hank' Lowsley-Williams meet with Tekkerz rider Amy Perryman for a surprisingly wild ride in the capital

Clock16:00, Sunday 13th August 2023

London is the biggest city in the UK and one of the busiest cities in the world. It's a concrete jungle; a built-up, tarmac-covered metropolis, with mile upon mile of busy roads stretching out in every direction. Even now, London struggles to shake its Victorian nickname: the Big Smoke.

In spite of all that, we were pretty sure we could link up the greener bits of London and have a proper gravel ride in the capital. And so, GCN's Conor Dunne and James 'Hank' Lowsley-Williams jumped on the train to do just that. If we could go gravel riding here, we could do it just about anywhere.

We enlisted the help of Amy Perryman, a local racer from GCN contributor Alec Briggs' team, Tekkerz. With Amy's local expertise, we strung together a gravel route that took us out of the centre and into post-industrial East London, before rounding back to the centre and the river Thames.

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