The ride left the Southbank at 7:30pm as it usually does these days, with about 800 riders in attendance. The weather was good and again with the summer months, there were a lot of newer and first-time riders there, including groups of teenagers still off school. Unusually, the ride turned right coming out of “Theatre Avenue” and did not head up the slope towards the IMAX roundabout, instead going under Waterloo bridge and south on Belvedere Road, then halting in Chicheley Street to regroup and bunch up before heading out on to the A3200. This was actually better in some ways to start moving the ride off into car traffic than the slope and the IMAX roundabout, which is a narrow road and strings out the Mass as it only gets started. There were no City Of London Police in attendance for this ride, compared to the previous two months. There were also no phone thieves trying to inflitrate the ride.
The ride headed in a large bloc through the Vauxhall gyratory, whooping and cheering coming out of the rail tunnel and travelling down Nine Elms Lane towards the old Battersea Power Station. This is a long straight stretch, and as the road opened up ahead, a group of younger riders accelerated off the front of the ride. As the road narrowed past the south western corner of Battersea Park, these riders squeezed between the stopped cars ahead, with others following them. This meant the ride got separated into multiple sections, with car traffic in amongst the ride.
After about 1.5km of this “filtering”, some older riders were able to stop the ride, and allow it to recombine into a single group again, before heading down towards the Wandsworth roundabout. For the remainder of the ride, there was no more filtering through stopped traffic, corking of large junctions was effective, and the ride regularly paused at major intersections to allow the riders behind to catch up with the front, so the Mass moved off safely together without allowing people to drop off the back.
The ride continued to head south west but then turned up towards Putney, and crossed the river at Putney Bridge into Fulham. The riders then piled en masse into Eel Brook Common for its customary midway stop for about half an hour. The “Goldfinger Soundsystem” bike was in attendance on the ride and some riders were dancing in the common as the DJs took turns to play some tracks. This affluent part of the city would be unaccustomed to Critical Mass visiting, and residents nearby came out to their doors making phone calls, with one walking through the stopped riders. The Police arrived very shortly afterwards in a van and a car, but then left again without any sort of contact.
The ride then headed back towards central, avoiding Kensington and Chelsea, travelling back in along the embankment, and turning back towards south across Chelsea Bridge when roadworks impeded sensible progress for the ride. The ride then retraced its steps heading northbound in through Battersea, finishing up at the steps of Potters Fields next to Tower Bridge.
