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#emptyroadsofengland – While the nation watches footie will you be out on your bike?

Missing England's big match for a quick evening bike ride? Share your empty road pics and it could mean free socks...

It's happened, the men's England football team have made it to a major tournament final for the first time since '66 – which means another chance for you to show us your #emptyroadsofengland if you decide it's worth taking advantage of the quieter roads to ride your bike instead of watching the big match.  

Maybe you don't like football, or maybe you can't stand the tension – but either way, tonight could be a good time to go for a quick bike ride on even quieter streets, roads, lanes, avenues, and even the boulevards (there must be some) as England take on Italy in the final of the European Championships.

The forecast is looking a whole lot better than it was a couple of days ago for most of the country too - so if you do venture out, take a pic of the quietness and fire it at your social media platform of choice with the #emptyroadsofengland hashtag and tag @road.cc if you’re using Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or anything else that likes a tag.

We’ll put together another selection (like some of the winning entries from the quarter-final and semi-final days now included in this article), and we’ll be dishing out some more socks too. It doesn’t matter if the roads you ride would be empty anyway or if they’re surprisingly not empty, just share where you went - extra marks will be awarded to anyone getting a flag of St George into their shot! Oh yes, and feel free to share your pics of empty, or less empty roads in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or anywhere else too... 

road.cc's founder and first editor, nowadays to be found riding a spreadsheet. Tony's journey in cycling media started in 1997 as production editor and then deputy editor of Total Bike, acting editor of Total Mountain Bike and then seven years as editor of Cycling Plus. He launched his first cycling website - the Cycling Plus Forum at the turn of the century. In 2006 he left C+ to head up the launch team for Bike Radar which he edited until 2008, when he co-launched the multi-award winning road.cc - finally handing on the reins in 2021 to Jack Sexty. His favourite ride is his ‘commute’ - which he does most days inc weekends and he’s been cycle-commuting since 1994. His favourite bikes are titanium and have disc brakes, though he'd like to own a carbon bike one day.

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13 comments

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Ihatecheese | 2 years ago
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As the poster above rightly said. In central London it wasn't that much quieter on roads. Just the pavements void of fans leaving the tourists and folks with other things to do. I was looking forward to zooming around the aftermath later. But then it rained a lot whilst England lost. So that was that and I went to bed. 

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dreamlx10 | 2 years ago
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I'm presuming that you mean england when you say the nation ?

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AlsoSomniloquism | 2 years ago
1 like

I went out at about 2:30pm yesterday as the actual match was too late to do a ride. It must have been something in the air but 3 bad incidents in 18 miles. 

First one doing 11mph up a 7% bit of hill on a 30mph dual carriageway and as I approach a side road a car comes along, carries on past the giveway as "only a slow cyclist", then stops dead almost in front of me because of the car coming up along side. 

Then 2 miles further down doing 25mph and a car decides it can beat me across the cross roads I had priority on. 

Finally another 5-6% climb with some horses in front of me and two cars close pass including a speeding BMW (natch) who then have to all slow for the horses. Glad to see the BMW decided that horses also don't need a lot of room either so an arsehole to all road users. 

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Tom_77 | 2 years ago
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Saw a very half-arsed England flag chalked on the road this afternoon. Only worked out what it was because "It's Coming Home" had been written a few metres before it.

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Tom_77 replied to Tom_77 | 2 years ago
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It's coming home...

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OnTheRopes replied to Tom_77 | 2 years ago
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admit it, it was you.

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dreamlx10 replied to Tom_77 | 2 years ago
1 like

It isn't though is it ?

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ktache replied to dreamlx10 | 2 years ago
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There will be much wailing and knashing of teeth.

Rending of shirt too.

And racism, those that cannot help themselves just simply cannot help themselves...

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Owd Big 'Ead | 2 years ago
3 likes

From 7pm onwards it was absolute bliss in my neck of the woods. Didn't cycle with any agenda, route or KOM's in mind, just enjoyed one more rare evening where everything isn't about the twats in their metal boxes, on their phones, thinking the world revolves around them.

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Organon | 2 years ago
2 likes

No dude, I like cycling and football.

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GMBasix | 2 years ago
2 likes

That sounds good.  When's it on?

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RoubaixCube | 2 years ago
3 likes

Well Im not a footie fan and i wasnt going to go out anyway but I relented and did push the bike out for my regular city crit.

Traffic levels were back to the first lock down levels on the way to central london and I managed to to beat my regular time by 7 minutes as the roads were way less congested and i was able to really open up the taps and keep them open for much longer bursts

Though Im not exactly sure how much of the time gained was down to there being less traffic/me being able to stomp on the pedals harder/longer or because i have been making a few adjustments regarding bike fitting. Obviously the lack of traffic on the roads helped a considerable lot.

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IanMK | 2 years ago
6 likes

...and the one driver that's out there with you will still think that you shouldn't be two abreast 🤣

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