Great rides: Cycling dusk ’til dawn

Just after midnight on the last night of April: our group of seven had pedalled for what felt like hours through dark, freezing Cambridgeshire fenland. Finally, we emerged onto a bigger road. A much-anticipated petrol station was lit up next to a junction.

Hands almost numb, I approached the night hatch. “Do you serve hot beverages?” “Hot beverages? No.”

I was on an overnight ride from Ely to King’s Lynn and back with the Fridays Cycling Club, a Cycling UK affiliate. Tonight’s guide, Claire Geary, had said that while the garage would likely serve coffee and tea, we couldn’t be sure.

Claire approached the hatch beside me. “You don’t serve hot drinks?” “Drinks? Of course.”

Ah-ha! My accent and frozen lips had muffled my delivery. Lesson number one for exhausted, overnight cyclists: don’t attempt four-syllable words when one-syllable ones will do.

Friday night’s alright (for riding)

The Fridays has been arranging overnight rides from London to the coast for almost two decades, with groups containing anything from a handful of people to more than a hundred. Always moving at the pace of the slowest rider, the group has ‘tail-end Charlies’ at the back, leaders at the front and wayfinders who stop to point directions at junctions.

The rides are almost like a night-time parkrun for cyclists – invigorating and adventurous but gentle and relaxed, too.

Participants range from Lycra-clad roadies to recumbent cyclists and bearded 70-year-olds on Bromptons. I first took part in the late 2010s. Back then, I was an everyday cyclist, riding a city bike around town and enjoying the odd, gentle cycle holiday with my family. But I sensed there was more.

In 2016 I heard about the Dunwich Dynamo, a 180km ride from London to Dunwich on the Suffolk coast. I was keen to try it but I rode a secondhand mountain bike and dressed in worn-out running shoes and jeans. I didn’t do the Dynamo that year; I did discover the Fridays.

On a rented town bike, I joined 40 or so others cycling from London to Whitstable on the Kent coast. It felt like an adventure. We stopped in Strood and paid a few pounds for rolls and handmade cakes served by volunteers, with the money going to a charity for disabled children.

Later, as someone fixed their flat tyre, ride leader Tim pointed out Soviet submarine the Black Widow, looming in the dark River Medway. After serving as a wayfinder and stopping to direct stragglers at a junction, I raced to catch up with the rest of the group ahead. For a few glorious moments I was alone on a dark road.

It was scary and liberating. Then I turned a corner – and there they all were, warm bike lights glowing. For the last seven miles of our ride, once dawn had broken, those of us keen to sprint broke free for a last, glorious descent into Whitstable and the breakfast café on the seafront.

The next year I joined another ride, borrowing my first ever road bike with toe-clips from a fellow Fridays member. We rode to Shoreham-by-Sea. Soon after, I signed up for the 300km Vätternrundan sportive in Sweden, renting a road bike and learning to ride with cleats.

There followed more night rides and, finally, the Dynamo. When I arrived in Ely in 2021 for the King’s Lynn ride, I had my own road bike, cycling shoes and fingerless gloves. I had, thanks to the Fridays, become a fully fledged night cyclist.

Cycling into the sunrise

After our petrol station stop in the Fens, we continued to King’s Lynn and a brief tour of the riverside before beginning our ride back. Cycling in the Fens at night, it turned out, was almost like being at sea.

You felt yourself surrounded by a low, flat nothingness. No hills. No trees. A distant, almost indiscernible horizon. Houses and patches of street lightning emerged from the dark, then receded. I was glad of the others’ company.

Claire shared her knowledge about the landscape – how attempts to drain the marshlands had been ongoing since Roman times, and how the Dutch installed a much-opposed, costly drainage system that resulted in the dry peat bogs disintegrating and the land sinking even lower than before.

At one point, the already flat road made a small dip. “Now we are cycling below sea level,” Claire announced.

When you cycle through the night, the same thing always seems to happen with your mood. You start out energetic and excited but towards three or four o’clock in the morning, your enthusiasm fades. It’s dark. It’s cold. There’s no one else around. But sunrise is not far away.

Slowly you become aware of a shift in the quality of the darkness. You can see the landscape around you. The dawn chorus starts up. A car drives by. The people inside are not on their way home after a long night, you realise; they are awake to go to work because it is a new day. An early morning pensioner walks a dog.

The occasional other cyclist passes on their way to work. Now there’s life inside the houses by the road. You are back in the land of the living. And you’re still riding.

After passing Denver Sluice, the heart of a system protecting the Fens from the invading North Sea, we started on a long path following the River Ouse. Here my energy levels flagged. But when I struck up conversation with one of my fellow riders, a little bit of vigour returned.

Fridays on my mind

The Fridays Cycling Club was started in 2005 by Simon Legg. “One night he got a few friends and they cycled overnight to Brighton at a conversational pace, had breakfast there and headed home,” Fridays organiser Titus ‘Bob’ Halliwell tells me over the phone. “They said: ‘Let’s do it again.’ They brought friends along and it grew and grew.”

Titus did his first Fridays ride in 2009. He soon started taking part in other cycling events, too, like the Dynamo, London-Edinburgh-London and Paris-Brest-Paris. The Fridays, he says, is a gateway drug.

In 2015 when Legg, who until then had done all the planning and admin, decided to step down, Titus and some other regulars asked if they could take on the job. “We all thought we’d do it for a couple of years,” he says. “But some of us are still doing it.” Newer members help, too. Today the club has 2,000 members.

The new leaders have been conscious of keeping Legg’s ethos alive. “Anyone is welcome as long as you have a bicycle,” Titus says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a £50 mountain bike or a £5,000 road bike.”

Other clubs can be quite misogynistic and all about performance, he says, but although there is still a male bias in the Fridays – around 40% of riders are women – that is not the mood here.

“If you come on a ride, we’ll get you there. It’s a pleasure to see new riders arriving at a seaside town, realising they have cycled through the night. That is what keeps many of us going.”

But what, I ask, happens if people are simply too slow? “There are a few rides where we have suggested quite strongly that people leave,” Titus says. “But they are not left behind. It’s done in agreement with them. Stronger riders may show them the way to the train station.

“You have to think about the benefit of the whole group. If it’s really cold and 60 people end up standing about waiting for someone who is a lot slower, for example, it gets very cold.”

As the Fens ride continued onwards that April morning, I was not at risk of falling behind but I was tired. When would the River Ouse cycle path end? And when would we see Ely Cathedral – the ship of the Fens – towering over the surrounding land and heralding the end of our tour?

Finally we arrived at Ely’s Market Square. Around us milled people who had just woken up, looking fresh and rested in the bright sunlight. After buying coffee and perusing the food stalls, we sat on a low wall to eat and chat. Soon I cycled back to the train station to take the train home for some sleep. Another night ride was over.