Even waifs and strays must pre-book online for the Christmas Day Ride, so sign up for a Billetto ticket and we'll see you at 11am at the Southwark Needle. The 2001 Christmas Day Ride was flogged round the Greenwich list but not elsewhere. The four who did this legendary ride agreed to repeat it. The rest is history - we now have members spread out all across London.

If you want breakfast beforehand, you can meet us at Beigel Bake at 10am. We'll set off from Beigel Bake at 10.30am for the Southwark Needle. Will there be anyone waiting to join us at the Needle at 11am? This all depends on the governance arrangements that are in place for operating cycling websites and social media.

As this ride attracts people not just from "Southwark", there will be a prequel ride, starting from the Marriot Hotel in Swiss Cottage (https://what3words.com/clips.s...) at 9am.

We'll ride through London on a day when there is only light traffic on the roads and we'll take a look at some of London's lesser known sites. These include new developments in the Nine Elms area, where there is an amazing Sky Pool at Embassy Gardens.

We will then cross the Thames at Albert Bridge and make our way to Edgware Road.

Those of you who think that names should never change will have a shock when we break for lunch. We'll be visiting the Beirut Cafe at 71 Edgware Road:

This is the restaurant that Barry Mason used to take people to on Christmas Day and used to be called the Cafe du Liban. In more recent times it was called the Sannin restaurant. Several times in the past we found it was too small and were taken to a different restaurant called the Beirut Cafe at 117 Edgware Road. This restaurant is now closed and is going to be called the Sheik Al Arab restaurant. However, the Beirut Cafe name has now been transferred to the cafe at 71 Edgware Road.

The 14 mile route for this ride can be downloaded from here: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/37588714

This event is subject to government guidelines with respect to Plan B rules and recent Omicron Variant news.

Please do not attend if you are self-isolating or displaying Covid symptoms and please ensure social distancing is observed and appropriate measures to safeguard ourselves and the public are taken. If government guidelines become more stringent, we will update this page accordingly.

We normally like to show you a picture of the previous year's ride to show you just how popular Barry Mason's Christmas Day Ride still is, even many years after his death in 2011. However, on this occasion, due to government restrictions, all we can show you is two of us partaking in the 2020 Christmas Day post-ride takeaway at Edgware Road.

However, things are looking up for the doing of the more exotic Barry Mason rides in 2021. There were a five-fold increase in the number of people meeting at 03.45am to do the 2021 version of his Midsummer Madness Ride:

Ride pictures are posted on our Facebook page.

Ride Leader: Nigel Bee (tel: 07415 315 690)