Author: Rob Ainsley

Oxford St – an aching east-west mile-and-a-bit of footslogging from Marble Arch to Tottenham Court Road past bully-brand chains and character-free shops – is said to be Europe’s busiest shopping street. It’s an old Roman Road, which explains its straightness – and atmosphere of battle. We don’t like cycling along Oxford St at all. Though…

Every single building in Regent St‘s mightily grand three-quarters of a mile is at least Grade II listed. They’re clearly keen to not to spoil the magnificent early-19th century streetscape by putting in, say, cycle parking. The street runs north (one-way to begin with) from Carlton House (down near St James’s Park) up past Piccadilly…

Stretching the best part of a mile from Piccadilly Circus to the edge of Hyde Park, Piccadilly is an imposing procession of upmarket stores, hotels and organisations. But if you’re heading for Fortnum & Mason’s, the Royal Academy or the Ritz by bike, beware the one-way system that means you can only go eastwards on…

We wondered what the best waterworks-based cycle experience would be. Cycling past Bazalgette’s Cathedral of Sewage, perhaps, on the Greenway? But the Greenway’s out in remote east London, and rather dull. There’s little look at except the broken glass shards in the middle of the path, little to do except mend your punctures en route,…

The short one-way street of Coventry Street, occupying only 100m from Piccadilly to the north of Leicester Square, is lined with tourist snares: Planet Hollywood, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!, Trocadero, and souvenir-tat places that sell postcards of royalty and snowshaker paperweights with London buses. So the answer to the question ‘how do you like…

There’s no cycling in all-pedestrian Leicester Square, which doesn’t allow vehicles. Probably just as well: it would be dangerous dodging the delivery lorries that ply the traffic-free piazza. Steadily humming by day, the partying Square comes into its own by night. If you pass by it on Charing Cross Road in the small hours, for…

Hidden away corncrake-like in City back streets, crankingly audible but not visible, Fenchurch Street Station is the most obscure of London’s mainline terminuses, and not even connected to the London Underground system. It also has surely the smallest concourse: my mum has made bigger sandwiches. In fact, for many of us it’s a surprise to…

The focus for important celebrations, such as New Year or winning the war or England regaining the Ashes in 2005, and home to the superb National Gallery, Trafalgar Square‘s lovely fountains, worthy statuary, and ambling piazza space are not cycling-friendly. There’s no cycling in the square itself (right, though you’ll see people scooting across the…

This quarter-mile tumult of traffic runs west from Ludgate Hill, in sight of St Paul’s Cathedral, to the griffin at Temple Bar that marks the boundary of the City where Fleet St segues into Strand. For decades the street name was a synonym for daily newspapers, but they moved out in the 1980s. Reuters was…

Gershwin’s song ‘Strike up the Band’ was apparently referred to by wordplay-happy British musicians as ‘Bike up the Strand’, no doubt to the mystification of our mid-20th-century transatlantic chums. In practice, biking up Strand‘s three-quarters of a mile (no definite article – at least, not according to the streetname signs) can be a very tedious…