Ride London - similar rides?

davep1

So it was just over a month ago, and I am still buzzing from the experience. I have registered for 2014, am thinking about the extra training I need to do to improve my time, I'll happily try to get a place with a charity if my ballot is unsuccessful, and I can't wait for the next one!
Apologies if this has been asked and answered previously, but what other rides come close in terms of number of participants and closed roads? For me, non-closed roads wouldn't put me off, but with anything more than a few hundred people I can see it being fraught to have to share the roads with the usual traffic. I would welcome a hillier/more challenging route, but that feeling of flying along with thousands of other riders was magic, and I would love to repeat it as often as possible.

Pross

There's the Etape Cymru but I doubt it will have as many riders though and it is this Sunday.

There's also the Etape Pennines on 6 October (entries still available) and the Etape Caledonia I think is also closed roads and is next May. With the Etape Pennines you can even pay £250 to ride with the OPQS team and use their support car!

thegreatdivide

Pross wrote:

There's the Etape Cymru but I doubt it will have as many riders though and it is this Sunday.

There's also the Etape Pennines on 6 October (entries still available) and the Etape Caledonia I think is also closed roads and is next May. With the Etape Pennines you can even pay £250 to ride with the OPQS team and use their support car!

The original UK closed road sportive is indeed on closed roads ;-)

Tjgoodhew

Anything like this in the south / south east other than the London 100 ?

I dont know of any that offer closed roads ?

cougie

I don't think there are.

A decent event wont have hundreds of people setting off at the same time so its no bother sharing the road with traffic. Most of the events I've done have ended up in small groups.

markhewitt1978

Looks at sportives on Evans Cycles and Wiggle, although the season for these is starting to draw to a close.

The thing is that with most properly organised sportives they as much as possible route you onto minor roads with little traffic, so it doesn't have to involve closed roads.

It's fine to have one big event which you are aiming towards, but it's greatly improved my cycling to be doing the likes of one every 6 weeks or so this year. Although at the moment I'm in the middle of three in a row then a three week gap and doing another

slow bloke

Try Ronde van Vlaandren, it's as good as closed roads and has the advantage of being on a decent course, c16,000 riders