We will be selling these awesome London Classic t-shirts for £15 at the Gipsy Hill Tavern tomorrow so bring some cash as there will be limited numbers available.

Food

There’ll be hot food on offer at the Gipsy Hill Tavern for heroic TLC riders who need sustenance. We’ve got a BBQ in the beer garden (yes we are optimistic about the weather!), rice ‘n peas and a veggie option.

Beer

The Gipsy Hill Tavern have a range of beers, wines and other fine drinks for everyone before or after the ride.

See everyone tomorrow!

The London Classic route for 2013 is 38.8 miles long. There are 24 pave sectors and 6 (yes, six) lung busting bergs to master.

There are 3 five star rated cobbled sections this year: Folgate St, Stepney Green and Wapping High Street  - all in E1. Pennington Street and the ‘Wapping loop’ are dropped.

As well as a few hilly joining www.binomo-co.in together bits we have added 2 major new bergs for 2013 – Wells Park Rd SE26 and the infamous Fox Hill SE19, the latter of which features a 20% gradient at one point! Thankfully when you top this you are but yards from the finish.

For more details and a downloadable spreadsheet of the route click on the word ‘Route’ above.

…gulp

Yes thats right!

Once again The London Classic offers you the chance to win the bit on a bike that holds all the whirly bits together. We have a 56cm Surly Cross Check in black to raffle off. Tickets are only £1. This is the swiss army knife of frames. Do cyclocross on it, make it fixed gear, commute on it, tour on it, caress it, love it

In addition we have a whole heap of stuff to raffle away – Halo rims, Brooks saddles, that kind of thing. Come and have a gander on Sunday the 7th.

Registration for The London Classic 2013 is now open and is limited to 300 so sign up by visiting our Entry page.

We are encouraging everyone to put donations on our Virgin Money Giving page which will save us time with the sign-up process on the day and get the cash to Evelina Children’s Hospital in a speedier fashion.

Our recommended donation for riders is £15.

There will be more information nearer the time but feel free to drop us a line if you have any questions.

…will take place on Sunday April the 7th 2013.

Registration will open on Friday the 1st of February.

more details to follow!

We hope you all had a great day on Sunday. Congratulations to all who won a prize in the raffle but in particular special congratulations to Dropout who got the All-City Mr Pink frameset. He was clearly chuffed to bits!

We’re working on bringing you a full total but the money’s still coming in from many angles – we hope to have a grand total by the end of the week.

The London Classic would like to thank…

Jon, Tacey, Kate, Sonia, Adam, Elaine, Tara and Damon for volunteering and making a massive impact on the smoother running of the event.

All at Brixton Cycles co-op but most of all Lincoln and Simon for their sterling work yet again. Additionally our event sponsors – All-City, Brooks, Halo Rims and Surly.

Brixton CC, Judith, Dave T, Gordon and Tricky for well drilled graft and craft, James for administrative excellence and general sorting things outness, Risa for design dedication, Louise for photographic flair, Stan for being Moto1, The Flemish Representation in London and Tourism Flanders for their contribution and nice flags, Christine for her amazing cakes, Frank for his wild years and enthusiastic hostelry, the staff at the Gipsy Hill Tavern for their tireless work, PJ and Felan and the GHT regulars who got behind them and raised so much dough, all who donated to the bike jumble, Luke Morris, Assos Martin, Ned Boulting, William Thomson, Patrick Mullarkey, Lara, Tom Simpson, Louise@sportsister, Siobhan, Anton and Elise; Digger; Luke and Lis Foy, LFGSS, U75, Bigfoot CC, Gabsy, Thomas, Richard St Pierre, Cliff, Carol, Cass, Hodge, H, Hetty and Lily-Belle but most of all Jenny and baby Cobblemonster!

TLC salutes you all.

For the cycling geeks amongst you here are some facts about The Tour of Flanders (Ronde van Vlaanderen) which will be live on the big screen at the Gipsy Hill Tavern once everyone has braved London’s own cobbles and ‘bergs’. Some of these facts may even be true!

Back in the 40s the race was usually held on the same day as Milan–San Remo. Most of the top French and Italians went for that and so there was only a single non-Belgian winner before WWII.

The first edition of the Tour of Flanders in 1913 was 330 km and there were 27 riders. The race finished on a wooden track that circled a lake in Mariakerke. Ticket sales covered only half the prizes.

Prizes during the war years were whatever the organisers could get their hands on including boxes of razors, a stove, bottles of wine and cycling equipment. In 1938 there was a bonus of 100 francs for any rider who led by 30 minutes. The last four riders in 1949 were given bottles of massage oil. The prize for reaching the the top of the Kruisberg first in 1953 was a washing machine.

In the 1930s riders had to carry all their own equipment (including tyres) and would probably have seen their modern contemporaries as a bunch of wimps with their radios, spare wheels and air conditioned team cars. Riders were eventually allowed to accept a rain jacket, a spare tyre and a pump, but only in an emergency and at the referees’ discretion.

Irish classics legend Sean “King” Kelly claimed his failure to win the Tour of Flanders was the biggest dissapointment of his career. He was second several times was desperate to win it as he had lived in Belgium during most of his cycling career.

In 1984 only Phil Anderson and Jan Raas managed to reach the top of the Koppenberg without walking. Riders walking up this famous climb has often been a feature of the race. The Koppenberg has been dropped from the route several times due to safety concerns.

The final word goes to Walloon writer Paul Beving, and his tribute to his northern countrymen’s race:

La Ronde is as much part of the heritage of the Flemish people as the processions of Veurne and Bruges, the festival of cats at Ypres or the ship blessing at Ostend. This cycle race is the most fabulous of all the Flemish festivals [kermesses]. No other race creates such an atmosphere, such a popular fervour.

Our friends from The Flemish Representation in the UK will be taking part in The London Classic this year so feel free to check these facts with them!