London to Brighton route map
March 10, 2007
I’ve plotted the 87km route from Clapham Common to Brighton in preparation for the BHF London to Brighton Bike Ride in June and uploaded it here.
On that page you will find the route card and route maps generated by TrackLogs plus the trl file if you need it.
I’m going to try and ride this on a Saturday morning in the next few weeks as it looks like a nice ride to the seaside.
It’s not the official route (as that hasn’t been released yet) but an amalgamation of everything I could glean from various online sources.
A lot of people in the online fora I searched said how frustrating they found the ride with the road often clogged with people walking their bikes up the hills.
Hopefully an early start time will help avoid the worst of the concertina effects of the hills plus I’ll approach it more as a fun ride and just relax and enjoy myself.
March 22, 2007 at 8:39 pm
The London to Brighton is a really special ride, I’ve done it a few times and the atmosphere is quite unique purely by the enormous scale of participants and the thorough organisation.
You’re spot-on to approach it as a fun-ride! It’s certainly not a race, because some choke-points get so clogged up with crowds of cyclists that there can be little traffic jams of 100% cyclists!
Overall it’s a great experience!
April 2, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Hi, I’m doing the ride this year for the first time and am slightly annoyed that I have an info pack yet no route. Are you saying that there is no official route yet? I think that its irresponsible as I would like to know well in advance as to how many hills I have to climb, gradients etc (I know the Ditchling Beacon bit as I live in Brighton and have driven over it in a car).My training requires me to know these things otherwise I may not train correctly then end up injuring myself on the day. I just came back from a 300 mile cycle ride in Vietnam where we cycled approx 50 miles a day but that was all flat, so its not the same. I would also like to know if there are any water stops on the way. We only have 3 months to train, which will soon fly by, so I think we should know the route by now.
April 12, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Thanks for this route map. Planning to cycle to brighton this weekend and this route via plenty of pubs and green is spot on!
April 13, 2007 at 3:30 pm
They don’t print a route because on the actual day you would never need to refer to one, its so well marshalled you just follow them. All they give you is a picture showing the height of the route so you get an idea of the climbs. From what I remember there are 3 climbs with Ditchling Beacon being the worst. other than that its undulating but nothing bad.
Unless you have an early start time you will likely get caught behind people less dedicated pushing their bikes up these hills. I got caught on the first one but was lucky enough to make it all the way up Ditchling Beacon without someone stopping in front or crashing into me. That’s what happens when you have 20,000 people or however many it is doing the ride.
May 7, 2007 at 8:42 am
What a great post. We cycled the route (as best we could work out) yesterday, so it was great to log on this morning and be “reminded” of some of the ascents.
June 27, 2007 at 2:11 am
The actual route of the 2007 BHF London to Brighton Bike Ride is on Bikely here.
September 16, 2007 at 11:40 am
I’ve done this ride for some 14 years now. The BHF used to produce detailed route maps, but some years ago they stopped under the premis that, “too much information might encourage non-official riders to attempt the route”. Pah!
The really annoying thing about this is that if you want to try to complete the ride before or after the actual event as either training, or just for fun, the route finding out of London can be a bit problematic.
So thanks a lot for putting the route map on the web Adrian, I think a lot of people will be downloading this. One last thing, I’m wondering whether you have PDFs in a larger map scale?
September 19, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Sorry Michael but I don’t have the maps in any larger scale. I import them into Bikely for anything more detailed than 1:50,000. Love your portfolio by the way.
May 16, 2008 at 4:01 pm
[...] route was copied from Adrian Fitch’s website: See here for the route, which I converted to TCX using the extremely excellent Bike Route Toaster and [...]
July 17, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Was hoping to try this next week Adrian, but can’t seem to get the map to upload. Can you help? wanabepunk@hotmail.com cheers mate.
July 17, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Hi Tom. E-mailing them to you now. Hope you have a good ride.
June 18, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Hi Adrian,
Thanks for all the effort taken over building and loading the maps. I did the ride for the 1st time last year and just following the route brings back great memories.
One point though. I’m not sure about your route through/round Haywards Heath. Talking to a colleague that rode with me last year, we think the route went from Lindfield into town, we remember going over the roundabout on the A272, then followed the B2112 south to Ditchling Common.
You’re a much more seasoned l2b’er though so we may be wrong. Sunday will tell!
Can’t wait
Regards
Mark
July 26, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Ahaan… I will follow.