The 360 is nearly here.
The route is up. The live GPS tracking page is live. The weather is looking hot, dry and fast. And, most importantly, a new niche hobby is about to arrive in your life.
Dot Watching
If you have not yet experienced dot watching, I should probably apologise in advance. It sounds absurd. It is absurd. You open a map to see where the riders are, and before long you are emotionally invested in a tiny moving blob somewhere outside Guildford.
Why has that dot stopped? Is that dot in a petrol station? Has that dot gone the wrong way? Why is that dot suddenly flying? Is that dot having chips?
This is how it starts.
On Saturday 27 June, around 20 riders will roll out from Greenwich and begin a full gravel orbit of London. The route covers 360 kilometres, with roughly 4,400 metres of climbing, linking towpaths, bridleways, byways, old railway lines, chalk ridges, sandy heathland, woodland tracks and the odd bit of London weirdness hiding in plain sight.
Every rider will carry a live GPS tracker, which means you can follow their progress around the route in real time. Riders become dots. Dots become obsession. There is no known cure.
The forecast is looking very warm, which should make the route fast. Hot, yes. Easy, no. But dry trails, firm gravel and fewer muddy wrestle-zones should make for a properly fast first outing.
The trails are also looking better than expected. There is always summer growth on a route like this, but it is not as overgrown as feared, and the main lines are riding well.
That does not mean The 360 is a soft touch.
The route starts from Greenwich, follows the Thames Path out of London, climbs through the North Downs, rolls across the Surrey Heaths, crosses the Thames at Marlow, climbs into the Chilterns, then returns via Hertfordshire, the Lee Valley and Epping Forest before dropping back to Greenwich.
The hardest part might not be the climbing. It might be resisting the temptation to bail.
That is the strange thing about The 360. London never fully disappears. You are rarely far from a station, a shop, a road or a very sensible reason to stop. It is not remote in the classic mountain-and-bears sense. It is difficult because escape is almost always nearby, waving politely from Platform 2.
There are still a few places left for riders who want to be part of it.
Ride it fast. Ride it steady. Bikepack it over the weekend. Or just see how far round the orbit you can get before London starts whispering about trains, showers and cold drinks.
The route is up. The trackers are ready. The dots are waiting.