The Nature of Weakness and a Moral Lesson: 100 miles in a Day Through London's Royal Parks

It was somewhere around the 45-mile mark of Saturday’s Pipe-Up Royal Parks 100 ride round London’s Royal Parks that I told two of my fellow riders – Mark and Aileen – that I would need to stop to look for a lavatory. I apologised for being weak.

“It’s not weak,” said Aileen, a hospital consultant, with the decisive tone of someone voicing a firm professional opinion. “It’s physiological.”

The group in Richmond Park: a joy to ride in.

As a group of seven middle-aged amateur cyclists trying to ride 100 miles in a day through London, we all faced at least some physiological issues undertaking the challenge. We were all what is sometimes hurtfully called the “wrong” side of 50. The majority (I think, without having asked for dates of birth) were over 60. As well as the lateral distance, the ride included around 1,600ft of climbing, including several circuits of famously hilly Richmond Park, a climb up Primrose Hill and two climbs near the end up Maze Hill, by Greenwich Park. Not all of us had previously ridden 100 miles in a day and it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that nearly all of us would manage the entire route and that everyone would complete the vast majority of it.

Six of the seven riders outside St Paul's, Herne Hill:
its ailing organ was the spur for the ride

We were spurred on by a shared desire to raise the remainder of the £70,000 needed to restore the organ at St Paul’s Church, one of the two churches of the Parish of Herne Hill, which most of us attend. The money will not only restore to fully breathing life a crucial congregational and community asset. It will also ensure that the church need not devote to the repairs funds that would otherwise be paying for the continued employment of the parish’s debt-relief workers and other core activities. The total raised – across two Just Giving accounts - now stands at £2,445. Another rider who couldn’t make Saturday’s ride has raised £500 in a separate effort. Further donations can be made here.

The ride certainly at points felt like a sacrificial effort. Because of a rail strike and the closure of Wandsworth Bridge, we had to squeeze past long traffic jams around Putney Bridge and, later, on parts of the road to Greenwich. Riders were treated – almost certainly the wrong word – to a stream of miscellaneous facts from me. I hope everyone feels enriched by the reminder that a key event in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent took place in Greenwich Park. Probably no one enjoyed the last few miles in the dark as I barked out instructions to ensure we’d complete the route with all our recording devices satisfyingly showing at least 100 miles ridden. My navigation app in the end recorded a distance of precisely 100 miles.

The end: relief not joy by this stage

At other times, though, it felt like a straightforward joy. It was uplifting to ride across the wide, flat expanse of Bushy Park in the unseasonal autumn sunshine. Richmond Park, whose undulating landscapes, hills and trees always make it feel a special place, felt particularly remarkable in the perfect weather. There was real satisfaction in clocking up miles on the gentle upward then downward slope of Regent’s Park’s outer circle. I’d ridden the route before as part of the planning process. But it was more enjoyable and easier doing it in convivial company.

The revelation for me, however, was the role of sponsorship in our ride. An appeal at work and on social media for support had produced contributions from people I’d never have expected to give. Some of them, I realised, were people I’d have been too mean-spirited to support if they’d approached me. It felt like at least a moral – if not a spiritual – rebuke. It was a lesson of the day even more striking than the reminder that it is a physiological and not a moral failing to have an ageing bladder.