L'Eroica Britannia Preview Ride

I slid my leather shoes into the toe clips, fastened the straps, and forty years disappeared.

My dad’s garage. His old Peugeot-Campagnolo race bike, hung upside down from the ceiling by a toe strap. The smell of cured rubber, cold steel and three decades of accumulated grease. The clink of metal on metal when I’d unhook it from the hook and wheel it out onto the street.

L’Eroica Britannia does this to you. It pulls the thread and the whole thing unravels.

📷 Moloko Cycling

L’Eroica is a celebration of nostalgia and a reminder of why we got into this sport in the first place. There is one fundamental rule: your bike must be pre-1987. Reproductions are permitted. I was on a pink Condor Classico Pista, fixed wheel, 48x17. Two gears: in the saddle and out the saddle.

Goodwood Motor Circuit is the new home of L’Eroica Britannia. In 1982, Goodwood hosted the World Road Championships, where Giuseppe Saronni and Mandy Bishop (Jones) took the titles. Both are attending the main event in August. Cycling history runs deep here.

I haven’t been to Goodwood in decades. I am not a petrol head. But even I got goosebumps pulling up alongside the race control tower and lifting my pink fixie out of the boot.

Daffodils and white picket fences line the circuit. Tim Bulley, International Director of the Goodwood Estate and a keen cyclist, told me they have six varieties of daffodil timed to stagger in bloom. Goodwood is painted yellow for most of the year.

📷 James Clarke

After the briefing in the control tower, we rolled out and straight up the hill climb road of the Festival of Speed. A baptism of fire for anyone who hadn’t touched downtube shifters in years. I watched them waggle for the gear, that familiar shoulder drop as they reached down to throw it in the big ring.

I still love downtube shifters. Nothing communicates intent quite like that.

On the fixie, I had no such deliberation. Just legs and resistance.

The ride was a treasure hunt. And the first prize was parked at the top of the second climb.

I smelled the Artisan Coffee Van before I saw it. Then Sir Chris Hoy leaned out of the serving hatch.

Nobody expected that.

📷 Moloko Cycling

Chris Hoy pulls espresso with the same attention he gave to track cycling: focused, precise, generous with his time. He was pulling shots as fast as we could drink them, pairing each one with Artisan’s chocolates. I was five coffees deep before we had even left the top of the hill.

The stories about Chris carrying his espresso machine to training camps and Olympic holding camps are true. Life is too short for bad coffee. I can relate.

📷 James Clarke

Artisan Coffee was co-created by my friend Ash Palmer-Watts: a genuinely gifted food person and the most serious coffee connoisseur I know. Ash is a road cyclist. Our paths crossed at LeBlanq, where his passions and profession overlap.

If you are a home coffee person, give Artisan a try. Their purpose is to remove the faff from making exceptional coffee at home. No espresso machine? They have coffee bags that work with just a kettle. If you do grind your own beans, their whole bean range is brilliant. There is a solution for every setup.

📷 James Clarke

After waving goodbye to the Artisan team (at coffee number five), we rolled onto a gravel section through the West Dean Estate. Beautiful. The kind of road that makes you forget you are on a fixed gear with no brakes worth trusting.

Lunch at the Ashling Park Estate, an award-winning vineyard. I do not drink, so I spent the time inspecting their bees with considerable enthusiasm while everyone else had the sparkling wine. The lunch was exceptional.

📷 James Clarke

When we arrived back at the empty circuit, Tim let us loose on the track.

Having trained all morning at social pace, and having eaten enough honey to constitute a dietary event, I lined up alongside Simon Smythe from Cycling Weekly. Both of us on fixies. One lap, full gas.

There is something clarifying about a fixed wheel bike at maximum effort. No hiding. Just pressure and pain.

📷 James Clarke

Artisan were waiting at the finish line. Six coffees is fine. Six is perfectly reasonable.

We sat in the evening light and ate from the Goodwood Estate larder. Cheese, charcuterie, bread. The good stuff. Nobody was in a hurry to leave.

📷 James Clarke

That is what these days are. Cycling brings strangers together around a shared language: suffering, kit, history, coffee, food, roads. By the end of the day, these people are not strangers.

The routes for the August event have just launched. West Sussex is stunning. The main event is August 6-7th.

I hope to see some of you there.

📷 Moloko Cycling

📷 James Clarke