Two weekends back a group of four of us set out on the 80km 'London Olympic overnighter' route on Bikepacking.com. As you can tell from the photos, the weather was pretty typical early March weather for the UK, but mainly dry and about 12° during the day down to 6° at night so warm enough to do some camping!
Because we were going so early in the year the campsite highlighted on the route wasn't open yet so we camped at Dobbs Weir which is on the 50:30km split of the route. As it happened that suited us, we did a longer ride out on the Saturday and then we're able to shoot back into town quite quickly on Sunday.
The other factor of going this time of year, and after an incredibly wet winter is parts of the route in Epping Forest are a absolute slop fest. Slippery, clay mud for 5-10km which requires some significant effort to get through and you definitely don't want to have to stop at the bottom of a hill!
This was one of the group's first bikepacking trip, so the shorter loop was a good introduction. We did the route in reverse, so spent day one getting covered in mud, but then day 2 was a quick spin down the river side on hardpack.
The pub near Dobbs Weir does good food, though we did feel a little under dressed! the nice thing about the route is you're never too far from a town so we stopped for lunch on day one when we felt like we needed to.
We had a fun time and you need something like a slog through some thick mud to have some stories to tell! I can imagine later in spring/in summer this would be a more chill route and certainly more possible for a working week night over nighter. Also worth remembering that the loop itself is 80km bit you do need to get to the start of it on the first place! Stratford is quite well connected by train, but two of us rode to the start from South West London which added 30km to the ride.
Overall a nice route that is almost exclusively on cycle paths and off-road. There is a little bit of time on the road when you get from/to Stratford and Epping Forest but nothing too bad.
Also it's a really nice way to feel like you've escaped the city even if you're not really that far away!
by kcgpuma
2 Comments
Thanks for the report! I actually did this route in one day on the 6th of March so may passed you at some point (I went clockwise).
The canal portions and Epping forest itself make this really fun, but I found the mud so bad that it makes the route hard to recommend as is. Particularly the section from Whitehall Road down to the Doughnut near the north circular.
Lippitt’s hill is also a killer if you aren’t so great at hills like me.
I feel like I passed you guys as I was going in the opposite direction and recall seeing 3 guys with bike packing gear heading in the direction of Epping Forest. Somewhere between Dalston and West Ham, but can’t recall where exactly.
I’ve been meaning to do that route as well for a shakedown ride, but currently building up a new bike that I’ll probably take on that.
I also did the Epping Forest ride with Stayer Cycles a few months back and the mud made it really tough.