The Royal Borough — Where my wheels go

Ride Overview

The ride is one of the most beautiful city rides in the world. Every turn of the pedal provides rich displays of architectural splendour; the houses are grand and often colourful, as are the many gardens and squares along the route. Boutique shop windows glisten with the exotic and splendid, the streets are smooth and pot-hole free. Streets are tree lined and gracious. However, the borough has a well-earned reputation for being anti-cycling and segregated cycle lanes are non existent, but in August when the residents have mostly gone to their second homes, you’ll most likely have the quiet back roads to yourself. For the ultimate quiet, choose to ride on a Sunday morning.

St. Luke's Church and gardens, Chelsea

Hyde Park - the original setting for the 1851 Great Exhibition

The Royal Albert Hall

Addison Avenue

Ride Practicalities
START/FINISH: South Kensington Tube Station (Bikes permitted on District and Circle lines - see TfL for restrictions) DISTANCE: 20km TOTAL ASCENT: 140m TERRAIN AND SURFACES: Quiet back streets, other than a couple of very short stretches including Sloane Square, Notting Hill Gate and Kensington High Street, where dismounting may be the safer option RECOMMENDED CAFÈS/PUBS; You are spoilt for choice all along the route, from Bibendum (2 Michelin stars) to the usual chains. Favourites with us include; Margaretta Terrace, Chelsea; The Phene, Portobello Road; Sally Clarke, Delicatessen , (a Kensington stalwart), Edwardes Square; The Scarsdale Tavern HISTORIC SITES; Kensington Palace, Carlyle’s House, Leighton House, Royal Hospital Chelsea LINKS TO OTHER RIDES: The Crocus Carpet, The Royal Parks

Ride the Route

Ride Notes
When Daniel Defoe (author of Robinson Crusoe) travelled the length of the country and penned ‘The Tour of the Whole Island of Great Britain’, he found ‘Chelsey’ to be a ‘town of palaces.’ Little has changed in the subsequent 300 years, as you ride south from South Kensington station and head towards the river. The streets are lined with gleaming-white stuccoed houses with grand porches and large windows. Once over the King’s Road (built by King Charles II as a private road linking St. James’s Palace with Hampton Court - the public were banned from using it), the architecture becomes more Arts and Crafts in style, with plenty of gracious red brick contrasting with shady green London Plane trees.

There are many. unexpected delights on this ride, not least David Wynne’s, ‘The boy and the Dolphin’. Wynne said about this most beautiful piece (situated on a very un-beautfiul corner) “the boy is being shown that if you trust the world, the thrills and great happiness are yours… if one meets a dolphin in the sea, he is the genial host, you the honoured guest.”

***Sir David Wynne;The boy and the Dolphin***

As you glide on smooth tarmac (pot holes are notable for their absence in this exclusive neighbourhood), you ride near to the site of the Chelsea Porcelain Works, whose china was said to rival Sévres. You ride past former homes of T.S. Eliot, Mick Jagger, Thomas Carlyle, JMW Turner and Henry VIII to name a few. It is hard to imagine that this part of London, where the door knobs gleam in the sun, was once very bohemian and filled with artists.

One of the many surprises of this ride is the amount of privately owned green space that exists on land whose value is beyond imagination. The largest is Burton Court, a huge area of private cricket pitches, tennis courts, and grass. Through a stately avenue of lime trees, you’ll glimpse Wren’s Royal Hospital building, built for the ‘succour and relief of veterans broken by age and war’. Over 400 ex-servicemen still live in the Hospital and who continue to wear their distinctive red coats.

Sloane Square, the very epicentre of Chelsea, with its headquarters of Peter Jones dominating the western end, is a few pedal turns on from the Hospital. Unless you are very comfortable in traffic, it is much the better option to walk across the square and re-mount on Sedding Street. For the next couple of kilometres, you ride through the heart of the Cadogan Estate, one of the most valuable of any city estates on the planet. It’s magnificent and grand the streets lined with huge red-brick mansion.

Once back in chic-bijou land, whose terraced houses once housed the maids and servants of the big houses, take a short deviation to the much loved, Michelin Building. The House was built in 1911 by a Frenchman - François Espinasse. Note the Michelin Man on a bicycle waving a whip on one of the inserted picture tiles! Inside is Bibendum, one of the finest restaurants in London - booking advised!

You now ride towards Knightsbridge and Harrods along Walton Street, whose boutique shops are worth a bit of window shopping. Once at Harrods, you’ll have to walk down Hans Crescent, which gives you time to admire the many very beautifully dressed men and women of Knightsbridge, as well as the famous window displays of Harrods itself. Crossing Knightsbridge, you continue to push the bike for a few more metres through narrow passages, until re-mounting on the bike lane at South Carriage Drive. The next kilometre or so is a delight of leafy Royal Parks.

Nottingham House, a villa which in the early eighteenth century was set amongst fields, was an ideal place for William III who sought cleaner air for his asthma than that which he breathed in St. James’s. He commissioned Sir Christopher Wren to create a modern palace from the shell of the House. Queen Victoria was born in the Palace and many current Royalty still call it home. Visiting it is one of London’s highlights, but on a super Summer’s day, it is perhaps the garden, an intimate oasis within the city, that is the most attractive.
From the Palace, you ride up one of the most expensive streets in the world, Kensington Palace Gardens, where houses sell for hundreds of millions. Many of the biggest and the best are embassies. Security is tight, photography is forbidden, but the elegance mixed with power is something to behold.

After a short interlude on the busy Notting Hill, (cyclists unused to traffic may wish to walk the couple of hundred metres), the scene changes from the ultra grand to the bijou. In the 1870s, this small pocket of colourful terraces, was described as ‘a dingy, ill-favoured slum’, where sometimes 32 people were crammed into one of the small houses. It was only in the 1970s that the blacksmiths, carpenters and bakers who lived here began to move out and the bankers, lawyers and financiers moved in. The area is one of the most ‘Instagrammed’ in London.

Crossing Notting Hill again, you follow the swarm of tourists towards Portobello, one of London’s most famous streets. The street is named after a Panamanian town, Puerto Bello, which was captured in 1739 from the Spanish occupiers, in an engagement known as the ‘War of Jenkins’ Ear’. On a Sunday, this will be by far, the busiest street you’ll ride down - only it’ll be filled with people and market stalls, rather than cars. The eclectic range of goods including, artisan cheeses, spices, antiques and hats - as. well as many street food stalls - makes it a place to dawdle.

Holland Park has always attracted wealthy residents. Parcels of land around Holland House (originally owned by the appropriately named Henry Rich), were exclusively designed for the luxury end of the market. The streets here are wide and tree-lined, and very gracious. Holland Park itself, is one of London’s most beautiful, if not finest park. Open air opera, fabulously maintained gardens (including the world famous Kyoto Garden), as well as the remains of the House itself, make it a wonderful place to stop. However, it is aggressively anti-cycling - the fine for riding a bike in the park can be as high as £1000. (To put this into context, an average London wage earner breaking the borough’s speed limit by 10mph would only be fined up to £340). This being Kensington, there is no provision for parking your bike outside the park either. Fortunately, there is still much to enjoy on this ride, so pedal on!

The route continues across Kensington High Street and into one of London’s most beautiful squares. Edwardes square, designed by a Frenchman - and rumoured to be where Napoleon and his officers were going to live should their 1803 invasion plan been successful - incapsulates the history of London squares. In the early twentieth century, a developer planned to knock down the Georgian housing and build cheap terraces in the garden itself, a move which the House of Lords forbade. Since then, the preservation of all London squares is protected by law. However, arguments continue both here and in other squares around the capital, over issues such as should there be a hard tennis court, or children’s play area? (Yes to the latter in Edwardes Square providing it is screened from the houses, and no to the former - only grass is permitted). At the end of the square is a wonderful flower be-decked pub, the Scarsdale Tavern.

There are more squares, lovely houses, quiet streets, gardens, trees and pubs to enjoy, before arriving back in South Kensington. The most significant area that you ride through is the Museum Quarter, designed by Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert, on the back of the 1851 Great Exhibition. The three museums, the Albert Hall, the Prince Albert Memorial, the Royal College of Music and the buildings which crowd around them are some of the world’s greatest masterpieces of Victorian architecture. The ride ends back outside the South Kensington Tube station, amongst the bustle of cafes and shops.

Every route on this website has been carefully researched as well as ridden. However situations on the ground can change quickly. If you know of changes to this route, or cafes, pubs and the like which you think other cyclists need to know about, feel free to share your thoughts below.

If you enjoyed this guide, why not subscribe to the website so as not to miss other inspirational routes?

wheremywheelsgo.uk is a Feedspot UK Cycling top website