Hi all. I’m thinking about joining a local cycling club and was wondering if anyone has any experience of either London Dynamo or Kingston Wheelers?

I probably won’t be racing – just want a group of friendly and not too serious people to join for group rides and the such.

Ta.

If you want to join London Dynamo you’ll need to hold a Cat 3 racing licence as a minimum, which isn’t a requirement for KIngston Wheelers. KW is a big club but has people doing lots of different things from road racing, TT, audax, touring, cx, mtb, sportives, club runs and beer drinking. They have a club run on Sunday mornings which has groups ranging from 20mph average to nice’n’steady with off road rides as well. Like all clubs you won’t get on with everybody, but there’s enough members that you’ll find people you will do. We’ll be out on Sunday quite probably doing a cx type ride of about 40 miles (on mtbs).

Addiscombe CC?
Good mix of riding although largely road based. Meet in Coulsdon for the club run into Surrey.

Kingston Wheelers have a membership cap at the moment
Kwcc membership details

But I believe there will be some slack as the new year approaches so best sign up quickish.. It is quite a friendly club and the club runs are well run and attended. Also consider kingston Phoenix and twickenham CC

Epsom CC, Pearson CC too. Have a look on the BC website for club listing.

BTW “to join London Dynamo you’ll need to hold a Cat 3 racing licence as a minimum”??

yep, on their website. Owing to popularity of membership. Looks like that may be relaxed in the new year.

Makes sense to me – if you’re trying to be a race focused club, immediately filter out people who’ve done little or no racing.

More that they’re full (for senior men at least) but you can bypass that if you’re a cat 3 or above.

Hill Climb

I was surprised by the ld third cat thing but presumably they too are swamped with newbies, kwcc runs at about 600 members ATM and had new people turning up at the Sunday club runs every week until recent changes

What about London Phoenix? When I was racing in London the guys from this club were all really nice. Not sure if it is specifically south based but a lot of the guys in the club certainly lived sarf of the river. They had the coolest jerseys,too IMO.

London dyno-rod are the least liked club in London, they don’t exactly endear themselves to other cyclists/clubs.
Kingston /twickenham/dulwich/Norwood/addiscombe/VCL all decent clubs.
There are a few others but they are a bit more exclusive and you need to be invited to join 😉

What about London Phoenix? When I was racing in London the guys from this club were all really nice. Not sure if it is specifically south based but a lot of the guys in the club certainly lived sarf of the river. They had the coolest jerseys,too IMO.

I’d agree entirely 🙂 LP does have a SW contingent with regular weekend rides, and although the majority of the weekend runs go from Barnet, there are plenty of organised rides that delve into Kent/Surrey as well as Herts & Essex.

Twickenham CC? Wheelers and and Dynamos are big clubs that tend to meet in small subgroups, so you can’t know everyone in the club.

TCC is smaller, has organised rides on Tuesdays and Saturdays (which was important for me), will give you the opportunity to try any form of cycling from track to hill climb, and might even get you racing 😉

I’m on the committee, drop me a line if interested. It is a surprisingly big jump to joining a club, but they tend to be friendly places and as ap says, the standard of cycling ranges from social steady rides to road race pace.

Apart from London Phoenix having the best kit they are more of a N London club as Kryton says. I’d look at Kingston Wheelers, know a lot of guys from that club and they are a great bunch with some VERY talented riders (Womens National HC champion for a start!)

Best kit? It looks like every other club kit. Not a patch on Brixton, Rollapaluza or CSGrupetto (all london clubs)

Will rides for LP!

Do they do a specsavers group discount?

njee20 – Member
Will rides for LP!

*cough*

But it was Will who said it was the best looking kit, wasn’t singling you out Kryton!

I’m interested in this too as I’ll be moving to the area to.
Would mainly join if part of CX leagues.

Can anyone tell me whether Kingston WCC and TwickenhamCC are affiliated/members of local CX leagues so club member points get counted, like NDCXL, or does the individual need to get themselves affiliated to whatever league.

I’ve seen that Twickenham CC’s membership fee is £40pa, is that quite steep?

thanks 😀

Pretty certain it’s London Phoenix that my son has recently joined. Please be nice to him. 🙂

TCC is Central league, KW is both London/SE and Central CX leagues.

Lol, this is starting to feel like a bidding war for new members.

LP is affiliated to London, Central and Eastern CX leagues.

I had a very happy couple of years with Kingston Wheelers, but that was 5 years ago now, and I think then there was a feeling that 250 members was probably too many.

For what it’s worth, I’d join a smaller club, just to share the people around the runs a bit.

🙂

Cheers 😆

I have ridden with the Kingston Wheelers for a number of years now. In the majority, they are a fantastic bunch with a huge membership base.
They have massive club rides every Sunday with pretty much every pace catered for and they very often have rides going out during the week too.

That said however, in my experience, they are very heavily focused on road and TT. During the winter they do have a fair few members that do CX but for a ‘cycling’ club, MTB is very much the runt of the litter.

Bike beans cafe in ashtead does quite a few rides, very friendly and nice cafe as well.

TCC is affiliated to central league Cx and we have an active group of riders. Wheelers is a friendly club too and I know and race with a number of their riders. Larger than we are, they too put on track, road and TT events for club members to get a taste of competition.

We have the best kit though 😉

EDIT:

MTB is very much the runt of the litter.

True for TCC as well, although I try and hold the fort with organised rides at Swinley and race Gorricks in club kit.

There are mtb-ers in KW, they’re just not particularly visible relative to the massed road riders.
We’ve recently ridden Gorrick and Banjo xc races, and Bristol Oktoberfest and also 24/12 in the summer.

And the KW mtb kit looks better than their normal kit 😉

LOL – doesn’t show the dirt 😳

But it was Will who said it was the best looking kit, wasn’t singling you out Kryton!

No it was me who said it actually and that is from someone who used to ride for Brixton Cycles club. 😛

Ah, if that’s the case – whatever happened to Malcolm & Amanda?

No it was me who said it actually and that is from someone who used to ride for Brixton Cycles club

Aah, so you did, I just saw Will’s “Apart from London Phoenix having the best kit” and assumed it was his comment!