This was a Southwark Healthy Ride to Beckenham Place Park. Unfortunately, although 15 people had signed up to the ride, only 8 attended. A loophole in the booking system had been discovered because, although only 15 tickets for this ride had been made available on the Eventbrite website, LCC had made some additional tickets available at https://lcc.org.uk/events/peckham-to-beckenham-place-park-ride/.
On leaving the park we could see the the Southern Cross Country Championships were taking place. Unlike with this ride, people had been invited to attend this from all parts of South East England and we could see that people come from as far afield as St Albans.
One our way back the ride leader's Komoot route appeared to have been switched from what had been expected and we ended up climbing up Anerley Hill to Crystal Palace Park. This enabled us to take part in a video shoot in a stunning setting, and this video has now been posted on TikTok. We are looking to see how many "likes" we get from people in different parts of the world.
This will also be an opportunity for us to make regular checks to see whether it is still available:
All this took place a world away from Regent's Park where the Islington Cycling Club's online Microcosm forum decrees:
- You should have a moderate level of fitness. For our general club rides you should be able to ride 50 km at an average speed of at least 20kph on the flat, with several steep hills and only brief stops. For Regent’s Park you should expect to cycle at an average speed of at least 24kph, with the benefit of riding in a tight group.
- If you're not yet comfortable at that distance or pace please build up with solo rides before coming along.
- Unfortunately, we cannot offer this session to complete cycling beginners as we are not teaching cycling proficiency.
But we don't need to worry about people saying this sort of thing online because, like TikTok, Microcosm may soon be shut down. This statement, however, is predicated on an assumption that Microcosm is not being run by a puppet: