The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride DGR 2021 in London, and Bike Shed.

Got a few little bikes here, extra seats again. Good morning and welcome back to the channel. It's about 10 past eight or something like that and it's the morning of the DGR or the Distinguished Gentleman's Ride which is basically a big ride once a year where a lot of people dress up in smart suits, ride their modern classic bikes and ride for men's mental health and prostate cancer charities and I honestly can't believe the luck. It's been awful weather for so long and today it's actually not that cold and bright sunshine so I'm riding out of London towards the M25 which is a big motorway to meet a friend of mine. We're then riding into London to do the DGR. We've got a table booked at the bike shed for lunch after the big ride so I'll take you with me and I'll film as much as I can. So I've just arrived at, nothing interesting until the services, just outside London to meet a friend of mine with a Triumph Speed Twin. We'll be riding in together. There were meant to be two Speed Twins but one of them, the battery died just last night so he'll probably meet us at bike shed. I did a poll yesterday and you'll see me with the bonnie here but I did a poll yesterday. What bike should I do the DGR on? The Indian Motorcycle Vintage Dark Horse or my Bonneville? Of course my Bonneville hits all the points. It's the perfect bike for it but also the Vintage Dark Horse is a modern classic. I think it's a modern classic so I did a poll actually because the types of bikes allowed on DGR, they say of course cafe racer, scrambler, bobber, chopper but no specific cruiser so I did a poll on Instagram. Should I take the Bonneville or the Vintage Dark Horse and 60% said the Bonneville. I then did another question, is the Vintage Dark Horse eligible? Is it a relevant bike and am I allowed to do it on and use it for the DGR? And 60% said I was allowed to use it and 40% said it's an ineligible bike. So I thought I better be safe especially given it's easy to filter on the Bonneville. So here we go, got the Bonneville, hopefully my friend manages to find this place because he doesn't have a sat nav. Looking forward to this, it's actually, it's not cold and I cannot believe that after the awful week we've had. Yes Josh, how's it going? So this is Josh, I'm riding in with Josh into London, we've got 35 minutes so that is perfect. So this is the bike I'm riding in with, I love these, I've never properly test ridden one of these but they're so nice and so many people say I should test this before talking about any other bikes, especially with the R9T as well, this is such a good competitor for it. God, it's such a beautiful bike. What have you done, just the seat? Yeah the seat, obviously the number plate. Ah yeah, but it was like that when you got it? Yeah. I like that. There you go. Actually I like that number plate, looks really nice with that beauty. Just got to old street roundabout and to give some perspective, we've been riding about five minutes, bike shed is just behind me and basically the whole street is filled with old classy bikes absolutely everywhere. Bike shed will be absolutely packed I'm sure and there's a properly nice selection of bikes everywhere. Don't know what's going to happen, I don't know when actually the ride is going to happen but such good vibe here, just stay for a bit. Okay it sounds like everyone's heading out so I'm going to get the helmet on and get ready. So just arrived in bike shed after probably about two and a half hours riding or something like that and this is the bunker, for those of you that don't know bike shed, this is the bunker where you park up right through the alleyway, park up here and this will probably be absolutely packed later but we've got ours parked up right there. Got a table so we're going to go inside but very nice, caught in a bit of rain but very nice little ride for a couple of hours, grab a bite to eat. Actually now I'll do a little guided tour while I'm in here, so little seating area here with the barber area just there and then coming through the arch, got a few little bikes here, extra seating area. It's just such a cool place with all of these bits, shop there, driveway through there and then just through here to the table area, eating area where we were just now but it's got to be the ultimate area in London, just a chill out location, area where you want to come to grab a bite to eat, do a bit of shopping, hang out, amazing. You may have wondered where Monica was today, she's actually been feeling a bit under the weather so I went out for the initial, it's probably about seven hours I was out for and it's a bit too long to be pilling if you're not feeling 100% so I've come back, picked Monica up and now Monica and I are going to go back into London, maybe just for a little two-hour ride, two up, grab a coffee and just enjoy the rest of the day. Well that's it, back home, 6 p.m, I left at 8 30 in the morning so that is nine and a half hours almost solidly on the bike but what a day, 120 miles almost exclusively in London which is a lot of miles for city riding but I recommend it massively. You can turn up in a group or you can turn up just solo and just join in as part of the big group ride, it's so accommodating, people are ridiculously nice, incredible selection of bikes. Riding for this London one, all around London, over to Richmond Park, back to Bikeshed, it's just a really really unforgettable day. You can actually still, you can still donate to DGR two weeks after, two weeks after the actual DGR so just go onto Distinguished Gentleman's Ride website, donate there, it was me filming almost exclusively apart from the last, maybe the last couple of hours when I was with Monica, I was doing a lot of the filming so apologies if the quality is atrocious but I tried to include as much as I could. Thank you so much for watching the video, please do subscribe to the channel, give the video a like and I will see you in the next one.