Brighton - directly south of London: 45 minutes away by train, an hour and half by car, or just over 8 hours on a bike if you entered this year's London to Brighton bike ride. Finishing in that sort of time is just ridiculous, but difficult to avoid with the amount of congestion we went through. It's the third time I've done the ride, previously in 2009 as well as in 2010.

Last night I just chilled out at home, and the plan was for Will and Si to head round and we all leave together in the morning. They were out yesterday afternoon, and I'm pretty glad I wasn't feeling strong enough to join them, think it was for the better! Will managed to find and make his way back to our place, Si wasn't as lucky and headed back with Martin down to their place. After an early start, myself, Will, Si, Martin and Seamus all met up in Putney and made our way over to Clapham Common for our 8am start.

From Clapham Common we made our way through Tooting, Woodmansterne Village, Nutfield Marsh, Crawley Down, Wivelsfield, up Ditchling Beacon and then finally down into Brighton. There were some ridiculously slow sections, where you landed up standing alongside your bike for ages waiting for the queues to clear, and then no sooner it opened up did you come across another queue. Painful. But we pushed on through and after 8 long hours in some drizzle and miserable weather, we made it into Brighton, where things had drastically improved and the sun was out to welcome us. We could've done with it a bit earlier, but at least we got to enjoy it down by the beach.

Haig met up with us at the finish line, he'd taken a walk in from Hove to come say hi and see how we had gotten in. The plan was to meet us for lunch, but with our delays, it landed up being mid afternoon before we got in. The others decided to head back straight away, they were in Si's car, but Seamus and I stuck to the original plan of fish 'n chips on the beach, followed by a beer in the sun.

After lunch and a well deserved beer with Seamus and Haig, we set off for the coach and lorry service back to London. As were a few thousand hundred other people. So again we stood in more queues waiting to get onto the bus. But eventually we got on one and made our way up to London, a lot later than originally expected. It was probably just after around half 10 tonight that I eventually walked in the front door, after leaving here at 7 this morning, so there's no doubt in my mind I'll be sleeping like a baby tonight! And probably re-think whether I'll enter next year or not - maybe there's another similar ride with a whole lot less riders...