… but when I finally escaped the office tonight about 8.30, got to the corner of Grays Inn Road, and found that Critical Mass was wending its way past – well what could I do?

A very pleasant hour – the degree of friendly cooperation that lets some 300 cyclists (estimates of earlier numbers ran from 700 to 800) wind their way through the streets of London is a pleasure to behold.

This was the “ciggy and have a dance break” in Smithfield market:

Ed has been undertaking the epic Paris-Roubaix ride. As someone who doesn’t enjoy the odd patch of cobbles around Wapping, this definitely is in my “won’ts”, although good on him!

And once again this year I won’t be making the Dunwich dynamo, although I determined to make it one year.

But I have found some interesting looking night rides around London, the Friday night ride and the Friday night ride to the coast, and I have made a resolution to get one of those in this summer.

Note to myself to join to cycling and walking tours that are part of the London Festival of Architecture that start in latish June.

The Camden Cyclist newsletter arrives with some good news – after much lobbying council has agreed to signpost a route out of these two stations down to the main east/west London cycle route.

It is possible to get out along a reasonably quiet route now details here – but only if you know the area extremely well. The one-way streets and twisting route is otherwise pretty well impossible.

Now all we need is a way to get across Euston Station/railways north of the Euston Road… (here there is also a route, if a roundabout one, cutting across a council estate, but you wouldn’t know it from a map, and there are no signs).

… a robin hopping through the blackberries (aren’t they supposed to lose all of their leaves in winter? – these certainly hadn’t), sparrows fluttering around a farmhouse roof, an appropriately wonky sign pointing along a single-lane road to the hamlet of Tilty.

It was once a great Cistercian monastery, the legacy of which is a very oddly shaped church, made of remnants of the abbey.

And the beams of the 16th-century coaching inn, The Saracen’s Inn, in Great Dunmow. (Although the modern town is a traffic horror – why would you want such a lovely historic town in which it is almost impossible to cross the high street because of cars screaming through?)

All of this without the need of navigation, thanks to Ian leading the Lewisham Cyclists and LCC ride – and thanks for their patience. I was a struggling tail-end Charlie for a lot of the day – I kept waiting for the second wind to arrive, but it failed to oblige, and my knees really weren’t getting with the programme.

Edward (a real cyclist) asks in a comment below if I’m going to do the Dunwich Dynamo this year, as I keep threatening every year….

On this evidence I’ve got an awful lot of work to do, and I’m not sure that employment and elections are going to make that possible, but I do have it on the radar and we’ll see. I don’t make new year’s resolutions, but I have decided that I need to get the best part of a day a week off most weeks, which is likely to often be devoted to cycling…

And landing in my inbox this evening is a challenge that I know I’ll never do, but it is a nice thought:

The North Sea Cycle Route is the longest signposted coastal path in the whole WORLD. A 6,000 kilometre loop of sand dunes, white beaches, country lanes, pine plantations, rugged mountains, ice cold fjords, free wandering wildlife and quirky villages, circling England, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Shetland, Orkney and Scotland (plus a new extra bit in Belgium).

Over to you Edward…

The boo is for whatever body is responsible for staffing the lifts on the Greenwich and Woolwich foot tunnels, which it was my misfortune to use today (the latter because the Wollwich ferry wasn’t running). It was Boxing Day, so particularly the former was thronging with people – of course nice stroll by the river is, quite predictably, what a lot of Londoners and tourists are going to do.

But were the lifts operating? Of course not. So I was one of many cyclists wrestling their bicycles up and down the 100-plus stairs each way. Normally it is a minor inconvenience, but when you are trying to do it through a non-stop stream of tottering grannies and small children running down looking at their feet and not where they are going, it is a positive hazard.

The hiss is for the fact that the lovely old traditional pie and mash shop in Greenwich is now a “Gourmet burger” place.

And the second hiss for me is a reminder that I really must get out and do some more miles on the bicycle more often. I did a nice loop through the City, Limehouse, and Greenwich, past the Dome (waving to Tutenkhamen), then along the Greenway and the canal home. But the last few miles were done in a very low gear – if you saw a cyclist in Bloomsbury about 5pm going very slowly that was probably me- and the lactic acid will drain from the thighs eventually, I’m sure.