The 360 Recce: Hemel Hempstead to Greenwich

Railway lines, Epping Forest and the long ride home through sleeping London

This recce was written after riding The 360 in dry, fast late-summer conditions. The trails were running hard, the weather stayed warm through the night and I completed the route in just under 22 hours.

By the time riders reach Hemel Hempstead, The 360 changes once again.

The big climbs are mostly done. The Chilterns have finally loosened their grip. Refuelled by Maccie D’s, you’re ready for the final nighttime sector.

Somehow this final sector often becomes people’s favourite part of the ride.

Perhaps it is because the end finally feels imaginable. Perhaps it is the strange calm that arrives in the middle of the night once traffic disappears and the outside world quietly gives up on you.

I think it is something to do with the illicit freedom of riding through the night. Everyone else is doing normal things: watching television, eating dinner, going to bed. Meanwhile we are the naughty ones, somewhere out on the edge of London riding gravel tracks after midnight beneath bats, foxes and deer moving through the trees. The air feels colder, the moonlight sharper and the whole thing becomes strangely peaceful. Just tyres, breathing and the soft whirr of a bike chain somewhere in the dark.

The 360 is a London Orbital Gravel Challenge in the truest sense. This final sector runs from Hemel Hempstead back to Greenwich via Harpenden, Hertford, the Lee Valley and Epping Forest before finally returning to the Thames just as the city begins waking up again.

Railway Lines and the Last of the Chilterns

Leaving Hemel Hempstead, the route quickly picks up an old railway line climbing gently out of the valley.

And it is important to remember this:

Railway lines lie.

They look flat. They feel fast. Riders naturally start pushing harder because psychologically they think they should be covering ground quickly. But the gradient is always there. Shallow, yes, but relentlessly long. Like riding into a headwind without understanding why you are not flying along.

Somewhere along this grind the route passes beneath the M1 through a tunnel. Another road crossed off the mental map around London.

It is a relief when the route finally abandons the railway line for the comfortable manicured commuter-belt landscapes of Harpenden Common.

The big detached houses sit dark behind trees. The bridleways roll endlessly ahead beneath weak pools of streetlight and moonlight. You do not really want to stop now, even if you could, there are no trains running now anyway.

That somehow makes continuing easier.

The Quiet Northern Edge of London

East of Hertford the route passes through Heartwood Forest, one of the largest new native woodlands planted in England. It is oddly reassuring that we still do things like this properly. Even here The 360 cannot resist being slightly odd.

One woodland sign politely asks riders not to enter because the bluebells are resting. Resting from what exactly remains unclear. Presumably bluebells lead harder lives than previously imagined.

This entire section is mostly off-road, on smooth deserted bridleways and quiet gravel tracks threading across the northern edge of London. Hertfordshire, it turns out, knows how to maintain a bridleway properly.

Riders who pace themselves sensibly through here make enormous progress simply by maintaining steady forward momentum.

That becomes the key now.

Not speed. Not heroics. Just consistency.

Anyone familiar with London knows the Lee Valley is effectively a corridor back into the city. Once you first reach the small upper reaches near Hatfield, psychologically it matters. The finish suddenly feels obtainable. Surely it has to be downhill from here.

There is another old railway line running into Hertford, although increasingly sections seem determined to become tarmac rather than gravel. Slightly disappointing perhaps, but after 280 kilometres most riders are not especially fussy anymore.

Steal through Hertford. It will all be shut anyway. Then join the Lee Navigation towpath for some easy kilometres.

Flat gravel. No traffic. Nobody around.

Floor it.

By now, London no longer feels like a city. It feels like something you are slowly orbiting in the dark.

The Last “Proper” Climb

Near Lower Nazeing the route finally throws in one last sting.

Objectively the climb is not particularly hard. Earlier in the day it would barely be noticeable. But somewhere around the 300 kilometre mark everything changes slightly. Small rises suddenly feel deeply unreasonable.

Talk yourself up it anyway as the reward at the top is the sight of Canary Wharf glowing faintly in the distance, marking home somewhere beyond the darkness.

And the best bit of the ride is still ahead.

The route passes Copped Hall near Epping Forest, a ruined eighteenth-century country house hidden in woodland and one of the final markers before the ride changes character one last time, the final crossing of the M25.

Epping Forest at Three in the Morning

Epping Forest is the emotional high point of The 360.

It is difficult to explain properly unless you have ridden through it completely exhausted at three in the morning after circling London for nearly a full day.

The forest arrives suddenly. The route starts its final descent, riding becomes fast, flowing and joyful again at exactly the moment riders need it most.

There are around 10 to 15 kilometres of glorious descending and flowing gravel through the forest. Yes, there are still occasional rises hidden in there, but mentally it feels as though gravity finally starts working with you instead of against you. Strange how tired legs still seem capable of finding one last effort in the middle of the night.

This is why people ride The 360.

Not for average speed. Not for Strava files. For moments like this where the entire ride suddenly makes sense.

This is the strange magic of riding a London Orbital Gravel Challenge through the night.

The route eventually spills out onto Wanstead Flats before the final run through Stratford and back towards the Thames.

The Last Few Kilometres

The final approach around the Isle of Dogs feels strangely surreal.

Then Canary Wharf looms larger. Twenty-two hours earlier those towers reflected quietly in the Thames at dawn as riders rolled out from Greenwich.

Now they glare above black water in complete contrast to the dark sleeping countryside you have just ridden through. Only an hour earlier there had been owls calling across Epping Forest and bats flickering through the trees above empty gravel tracks. Now you are back beside a city that never really stops moving.

The city is silent, the roads empty. Automatically your pace slackens as you drift down through the Isle of Dogs towards the Greenwich Foot Tunnel and the finish line. Only after the final corner does Greenwich reappear across the river, exactly where the ride began.

Somewhere near the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel we caught the riders whose tyre tracks we had unknowingly been following for most of the night. Everyone looked slightly dazed. Slightly suspicious of what had just happened. Twenty-two hours earlier we had rolled out beside the Thames before sunrise. Somehow we had managed to ride a full gravel orbit around London and ended up back in exactly the same place.

At the finish there is mostly relief. Hunger. Slight confusion. Riders stare vaguely at bike computers and empty food wrappers trying to process numbers that no longer feel entirely connected to reality.

The real sense of achievement arrives later.

Usually the next morning.

You start thinking back through the ride in fragments. The Thames Path at dawn. The woods beyond Ide Hill. Sandy heathland near Swinley. The evening light over the Chilterns. Epping Forest at three in the morning.

And gradually the scale of the thing begins to land.

There are no crowds. No banners. No dramatic fanfare. Just exhausted riders staring back across the Thames towards the Naval College as dawn begins creeping back into the sky again.

The same river.

The same skyline.

An entirely different person standing beside it.