A good crowd turned up for the 17th anniversary including many in fancy dress for the wedding. Some people had flags, but most of the costumers were in an ironic vein.

As to numbers, what a thousand? The mass at the start completely filled the Waterloo roundabout and then some. I guess the warm weather and the public holiday helped swell the numbers for the start of the summer season.

As it turned out the roads into Central has been reopened, but the mass crawled down the strand because the royal supporters had taken over the whole of the Mall into Trafalgar square. Eventually we turned around on the strand and cut across the pavement into Agar street and then left into William IV. But it was all pretty much walking space.

The ride then turned up Charing Cross Road where the vanguard of the ride sped up to the junction with Oxford Street under Centre Point. From the point of view of the front of the queue things where pretty good natured, I guess the drivers where all anticipating delays of some kind.

However, the tail of the ride was involved in some sort of big ruckus with a gangster nutter back down by Leicester Square and we lost contact with them for a while.

By the time we got to Park Lane they'd seemed to have caught up, but the split in the group meant there was a lot of traffic between the front and the back. The chap on the recumbent, I think, was hollering 1750, which I think he meant was the number on the mass.

At Hyde Park corner, the East London contingent, as ever refused to go any further west ("it's just so far away on my fixed wheel bike, etc.") so we turned about to go down Constitution Hill towards the palace. Which frankly, I thought retarded, given that tens of thousands of drunk royalists where blocking the way.

About of the third of the mass got through maybe, a third turned around and a third disappeared. For some unknown reason, the inertia route of going back down Picadilly was plumped for and we crawled down there too, reuniting with some of the contingent from the mall by the time we reached Cambridge Circus.

We went right to the end of Shaftesbury and carried on to High Holborn, right onto Kingsway and down to Bush House, left past the High Courts and all the way down Fleet Street to St. Pauls.

I thought this bit was best, nice wide open roads and still quite a big mass. The sound system had been working and pumping out the jungle (I guess) from Constitution Hill. Some attempts where made to get past St. Pauls but the steps seemed too inviting I guess. The ride often disappears into Paternoster Square for a circle about the place, so this seemed like an unusual choice - but quite an enjoyable one. It was a sort of Naples vibe, drinking in the plaza, resupplied by the Paternoster Square supermarket.

It didn't seem like we'd ever leave. A few hundred got there and started drifting off in groups to find pubs, etc.

Suddenly the sound system headed off and about fifty people dropped everything (our litter - sorry - where were the bins?) and went quite quickly down Canon Street, Queen Victoria, to Bank, up passed Bishopsgate and all the way up the Kingsland Road to God knows where, because here about a dozen South Londoners got scared and turned around and I was one of them.

Where did the north londoners go? Who knows, Dalston? Scotland? It was the fancy dress crew moving along north with the sound system but there weren't many left as they had gone off at a fair crack, scattering the tail as it went along. As usual I felt bad for the bloke with the Jamaica sound system with his kid who often get abandoned at the back, despite their loyal waiting around at St. Pauls'. It's always like that I guess.

As usual, much thanks to the sound system crews, etc. etc.

My dire warnings of the Special Patrol coming up to beat heads came to nothing as we had - to my knowledge - virtually no problems with the police, occasionally corking them off without incident.

But I would have been much happier if we had gone South West...

one day.

PEACE

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Ride was really good. There was one crazy incident I saw where someone tried to ram his way though riders and some violence ensued. The guy was a total psychopath. But other than that it was a nice night. I thought the music was excellent. We finished up at St. Paul's Cathedral where we had a little party on the steps.

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Pictures from confrontation...

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=9350688&id=582689147

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=9350689&id=582689147

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Enjoyed the mass (though as northers we left at oxford circus back north east on fixed gear for beer at look mum no hands the scent of hipster spice in our hair)

The rucus on charring x road was nasty the car guy really tried to beat up the kid who managed to get away fairly unscathed. Car-guy chased then tried to get the old bill, in a van, to listen to his tale of woe and they didn't care

Thanks to Mike for making the 'How to Cork' leaflets, Really good advice and great graphics. So corking was so good this time.

David