Tours de London

Photo: Islington to the left, The City of London to the right.

Born of Corona virus boredom, I started something that is growing into a very small thing. It’s nowhere big enough to be called viral or a trend. I’m sticking with “It’s a thing, but not a big thing”.

I’ve been thinking about this for some time. With much less traffic on the roads, now is the best time to start the “thing”

I mapped out the boundary of the London Borough of Islington and then worked out a cycling route as close to the boundary as possible. Two principles applied:

The route must remain within the Borough
The route must be legal (no going the wrong way around a roundabout or one way street etc.)

It took me two recce rides to work out an optimum route. I had to see for myself that the border between Islington and Haringey does indeed go right through a row of terraced houses, across a railway line with no footpath/bridge and does not go through the private garden I ended up in (they were nice about it and accepted my apology).

The Giro d’Islington (named in Italian in honour of ICC’s Italian twinned club, La Centinarolese) route is 21km, took me an hour, non stop, alone, so well within the current restrictions.

I posted my endeavours on the Islington Cycling Club Forum and that’s when it started to become a “small thing”.

Club mates started creating and riding routes:

Tour de Camden by Mike