B2B Social and news on the route

Not exactly biking weather, is it? I'd like to say that I'm a year-long cyclist, getting up early on freezing winter mornings to stick on my warm togs and take on the bracing 12 miles to work. But I'm not. In fact, as it turns out, I'm a bit of a two-wheeler wuss - even now looking out at the (fairly slight) drizzle and thinking... naaaah. Tomorrow.

But then, as your man Sam Cooke says, "a change is gonna come". Oof. Apologies. But the sun (surely, surely) is on its way, the Surrey Downs lie in wait a matter of miles away from sarf-east London... and Bike to Bestival looms large and very exciting just a matter of months away...

We've been ferreting away at the details of the bash of late; in a matter of days, we'll be sending out, to those of you who've declared an interest in the ride, a FAQs document which will hopefully start to fill the gaps in a wee bit. In the meantime, though one or two other bits and pieces:

First up, towards the end of next month we'll be inviting as many of you as can possibly make it to a Bike to Bestival social. Apologies at this point to those of you outside of London; we really don't want this to become a London-centric thing, and as time goes on we'll be thinking of ways to try and remedy this. For now, however, we'll be sticking to the Big Smoke and hiring out a big old room in a lovely pub somewhere...

Details to follow very soon, but this will be a chance for you to come along, share a few ales, have a natter... and most importantly, kick-start the whole musical element of the trip. We'd like the chance to see how many musicians we have and to figure out how this is all going to work. Practically speaking, the chances are that we'll form lots of little groups within the whole gang, but it'd be good to think that we can rustle up a few numbers that we can play en masse and make one big, beautiful noise. Bestival are very keen that we all play together on site - and who knows, we may even get to perform on stage in front of thousands of adoring fans. Yes!

Secondly, the route...

As you probably already know, we're going to be taking on a fair section of the Olympic road-race route. This will take us out of London via Hampton Court, and then south past Weybridge, veering off just to the east of Guildford, before heading west towards our campsite. Handily, this part has already been mapped out for us by London 2012 (do you think they might do the rest of it, too?) You can take a look here:

http://www.london2012.com/documents/venue-documents/cycling-road-race-route.pdf

That's all for know; but keep 'em peeled here for more bits and pieces very soon...