EMU ( Eastlondon Muni Urban)

Yesterday a little gang of muniers went for a ride in the Heart of Londons
Docklands, just to to east of the city centre ( this is London UK). We
meet up up at greenwich, beside the Cutty Sark ship for a bit of hopping
and bouncing along side some surprised skater kids, before taking the
stairs down to the foot tunnel under the Thames. Once down there we
ignored al the no cycling signs and rde under the river. Emerging from the
lift on the other side to follow Joes meandering route to Tower Bridge.

The group was Joe(dumb blonde), Joe(engineer), Rocket, Sarah, Harvey
and Chris. Only Joe (e) was on a 20 so he had to pedal like stink all the
time to keep up. The rest of us were on a mix of 26inch Pashleys and
24inch fat trye unis.Joe and Harvey were the jump masters of the group,
Rocket, Joe and myself are more XC riders and Chris is still getting used
to a 26 after a long gap with no uni but having a 20 inch as a kid.

This being a Joe ride we quickly found some mud, even in the East end of
London there is mud and Joe found it on the egde of the Mudchute City
Farm, there was even a cattle grid to compleate the rural image. Much of
the first section of the route was past massive office blocks built on
the old dock sides. We all managed not to fall in the deep water and
crossed a load of bridges. There were a few play stops, one of which was
by a big fountain, Joe proved that you could ride all round the basin
edge, but no one else took up his challenge.

After a bit we left the offices behind and started riding down residental
roads, every now and then we could acess a bit of the river side, the tide
was out and it was a LONG way down from the walk ways to the muddy beach
below, fortunatly no one made the trip. A kids playground provided the
oppotunity for Joe and Joe to show off jumping on things, and Rocket the
chance to do a bit of slackrope walking up the climbing stucture.The local
kids made all the usual clown comments, bet the next clown with a uni who
vists their school will have a hard time.

Lunch time found us at St Katherines Dock, a rather touristy bit of quay
next to Tower Bridge. Some of the group jumped on and off bits of
scupture, the security guards were fairly good about it and only once told
us to “go easy”. We therefore went easy and stoopped for pizzas.

After Lunch 5 of us plus a couple of walking friends of Harveys who
joined us at lunch, crossed Tower bRidge and took in the play spot by the
new London Authority building, theres a rather cool stone amphitheatre
there with steps shallow enough that I could ride down them. Visable
inside the building was a rideable looking ramp, which allegedly curls all
the way up the tower. If any one knows who we need to ask for permission
to ride it, could you let me or Joe know.

Other ride continued along the south bank to London Bridge, the area was
swarmimg with tourists and we got a lot of comments, ever notice how you
can hear just half a comment and know what the other half was… Once over
London Bridge we had a spell with no tourists riding along side a dirty
great dual carrige way road till we were just blow St Pauls
cathedral. We took a little while at St Pauls to play on the steps of
Sermon Lane.

From sermon lane we could look over the Wobbly bridge to the Tate Modern
at Bankside acrross the river. The wobbly bridge ( which no longer wobbles
in quite the same way) was covered in people the whole time, its become a
real tourist draw since it was reopened. Needless to say this crowd made
it all the more attractive to Joe and Joe as a race tack and they raced
each other over, Joe won, but only just. Harvey meet some more people that
he knows at Bankside and we spent a while hanging aound listening to
regae watching bubbles drift past and admiring Joes acheivement in
geting a Platypus bladder to siphon water out of a bottle as a re-filing
method.

The last section of ride I did, took us along the South bank to The
National Theatre. The bike hire place at Gabrials wharf admitted they
don’t do unis. While a small girl in the back of a trailer bike squealed
very excitedly when she realised we only had one wheel each on our
cycles. I left the others playing on the stone circle by the National and
took the subterainen route through to Waterloo station.

We didn’t do masses of miles ( maybe 10 ) but we did do plenty of
steps, benches and other stuff. Good fun.
I hope the sunday riders had a much fun

Sarah

Union of UK Unicyclists
By and for UK riders

Cheers everyone for coming along, it was a pretty wicked weekend.

Sarah’s account covered Saturday pretty well, just to say, we went on to have a short play round the Shell Building and the stuff down there and then died.

Come Sunday and we headed off back up to the South Bank for a full on trials session. When we got down there, there were three or four trials bikes playing in the Shell Building, so we went down for a chat and to ride around there. For those who don’t know, the Shell Building is an amazing old tower block which has a big courtyard full of drops, walls, stairs, rails, sculptures etc. in which skating and trials biking is as far as I can tell completely tolerated. I learn’t the basics of going to pedal / crank on an obstacle here which was fun.

Then we went off to ride round the back of the South Bank, there’s a fun ‘sculpture’ here which is basically a bizarre set of stairs with a ridged edge which was mucho fun to ride on until the security came and told us that we were naughty naughty. Actually the nice security man gave us some tips on where we could ride without him coming to tell us off so we headed towards the Tate, pausing only briefly to have a play in the underground section at South Bank, which is great fun, lots of steep slopes and steps and concretey architecture, but always completely packed with skateboarders.

On the way to the tate, I took a chance look over the river and noticed it was low tide. A peek over the railings confirmed that there was lots of beach down there, so we popped down to the beach for a bit of a ride. The sand next to the river wall was almost unrideable, just mounting put the tyre in it over the rim. As we got towards the river, it changed into a bizarre moonscape of bricks and large stones which was incredibly difficult and then to deep mud nearer the edge. This was just asking for a challenge, which I decided would be to ride from the river wall, out and get the tyre wet and then back. I made it out there after several tries, but when I tried to turn to go back up the tyre was too stuck in mud and I fell into mud up to my ankles and left that challenge for another day. Joe R also found a nice big rock to do trials on, although being wet it was incredibly slippy and I wasn’t having any of that.

Then on down to the Tate, we met the trials riders here again, and Joe tried a huge gap they were doing, and got this close to clearing it several times. We then popped down to the museum itself just to have a look see and couldn’t resist snapping a quick picture inside, although we only got about 10 metres in before having to beat a retreat from a man in a bright orange coat.

From here, we raced over the Millenium Bridge again, Joe R losing totally this time due to the bad tactical decision to stop and talk to someone about unicycling in the middle of the bridge! Pootled up to St Pauls and then road the stair ride down, the stairs at St Pauls are great, there’s a ramp next to them that everyone walks up so they’re always quite clear and there’s about 8 flights of stairs, starting at a 7 set, then gradually decreasing in difficulty to the final 3 set. They’re wide enough to race down too, which we tried although a crash in the middle set put paid to the race.

Then we popped down to under the millenium bridge where the trials bikers were again. On the beach here we found a wicked drop, but it was a bit too wicked for anyone to try, about 10ft minimum to a somewhat rickety wooden step transition, followed by a ride down of the same amount or more. Even the bike riders weren’t having any of that one. There were some more bits to play round here so we footled about before heading back along the North bank and then across back to the Shell Centre (via a sneaky ride of the sculpture on the s.bank). After a brief play,I was completely dead, so we pootled up to Waterloo to finish.

lots of pictures at http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/albup26

Re: EMU ( Eastlondon Muni Urban)

Rocket was too, although given his hockey playing he’s well fast on the 20.

Joe

Observer: Hey look… soft and garbled why don’t they… too soft to hear

Unicyclist: Hey! Where’s the other half!

I’ve never seen a pootle ride a uni!

Sounds like lots of fun. Great pics too! Thanks, all.

I’d just like to say that I had already lost the race - otherwise there’s no way I would have stopped to talk :slight_smile:

Heh - I had forgotten about riding inside the Tate - There’s something really cool about riding inside an art gallery :slight_smile:

That was a completely insane weekend - Roll on the next one :slight_smile:

Neither have I , but I’ve seen plenty of riders pootle a uni!

Sarah

On Sun, 23 Feb 2003 17:56:09 GMT, Sarah Miller <sarah@vimes.u-net.com>
wrote:

>The local
>kids made all the usual clown comments, bet the next clown with a uni who
>vists their school will have a hard time.
Enjoyed the write-up Sarah. Especially that ^.

Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict

Adult child of alien invaders.

REPOSTED ON FORUM, YOU KNOW WHY

Re: EMU ( Eastlondon Muni Urban)

On Sun, 23 Feb 2003 17:56:09 GMT, Sarah Miller <sarah@vimes.u-net.com>
wrote:

>The local
>kids made all the usual clown comments, bet the next clown with a uni who
>vists their school will have a hard time.
Enjoyed the write-up Sarah. Especially that ^.

Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict

Adult child of alien invaders.

thanks also for that groop it was a good day

despite all of my stacks into hard unforgiving concrete!
at least i get to enjoy the faces who appreciated it

I shall add more pics as soon as they are ready

here’s to more in the future

pharley aka harley aka harvey (oops!)