“Fancy a run?”
I do not. I don’t fancy small talk, either. It’s 6.45am, for God’s sake, and I’m barely through my first coffee. But I politely mumble a demurral and my runner friend strolls off. Someone taps me on the shoulder. “You know who that was? Jonny Brownlee MBE.” Just one of the most decorated triathletes in Olympic history.
Fancy casually bumping into legends over breakfast? Welcome to the Joyride Festival. Three days of road riding, wellness and partying on the Isle of Wight – and I’ve never seen anything like it.
The weekend begins on a Friday morning at Goodwood Motor Circuit circuit in West Sussex. The Joyride crew dispense coffee and pastries to a growing group of riders, including Johan Museeuw, former Tour of Flanders winner, UK ultra riding legend Chris Hall, and a remarkably cheerful Alison Jackson, Canadian road racing champion and Tour de France Femmes competitor, who’s only two days off a brutally competitive Giro d’Italia race.
Alison Jackson
There’s a van for our luggage, a support car to follow us as we ride 80km to the Southampton ferry, and Mick the mechanic hands me a high-end Swift bike, which costs more than my first car.
By 9am, we’re off, heading into the leafy backroads of West Sussex, on our way to who knows what…
Flow state
Riding with strangers like this is instantly, life-affirmingly fun. I fall in next to Matt, who explains he didn’t start cycling until his 40s, after a stroke nearly killed him. Desperate to find a way to reconnect, he started riding, and hasn’t looked back.
He’s got a point. More and more people are realising they can forget about Zoom, stop doomscrolling and restore body and mind by riding. So many that there’s now a market for Joyride, which combines riding with the pros, wellness, glamping, Michelin-starred food and international DJs in one concentrated three-day dose.
“I knew there was a big open space in cycling,” LeBlanq and Joyride founder Justin Clarke explains, “which is the high-end execution of a hospitality experience for people who like to ride bikes.”
The result is the cycling Club Tropicana you didn’t know you needed.
After our ferry ride (or a Sunseeker transfer for the Platinum guests), it’s a short climb up the hill behind Cowes to Northwood House, whose elegant Victorian splendour and manicured grounds have been transformed into the bougiest cycling party I’ve ever been invited to.
Smiling faces take our bikes and spirit them away for cleaning and a mechanical makeover. Tote bags packed with apparel, cosmetics and nutrition bars and gels are pressed into our hands, and my wife and I are guided to a really quite lovely yurt – a real bed, proper linen, carpets, and bedside lamps, with our luggage ready and waiting.
After 80km of riding, I need a hot shower, a cold drink and several hundred calories, but the Joyride folks know their audience, and we’re treated to a cocktail bar, free-flowing non-alc drinks, and piles of cake and snacks more suited to a dining hall scene in a Harry Potter film, while the first rumblings of the evening’s DJ line-up start pulsing from the stage.
Joyride Festival site in Isle of Wight
Rare connection
This isn’t for everyone. Firstly, it’s pretty exclusive – there are around 400 places total, the cheapest packages begin around the £750 mark, with Platinum packages coming in at £5,250 per person. And while Joyride Festival offers a lovely bit of glamping, and some truly delicious food, and the wood-fired hot tubs positively bubble in anticipation, this is not why we’re really here.
Joyride’s USP is connection. As an amateur at the thing you love, nothing’s more validating than feeling you have something in common with the pros: shared passion, shared values, shared experience. But connection is often sold under a false pretence, one that substitutes meaning with mere proximity. If Man U sells you a kickabout with Bruno Fernandes, you’re paying a fortune for a forced, staged experience. He would rather be elsewhere, his PR’s constantly checking at her watch.
Riding your bike is the most powerful, positive drug you can take to feel good.
Cycling’s different. The people who love it also actually do it for fun. Riding alongside cycling superstars this way doesn’t feel awkward; it feels great.
“Riding your bike is the most powerful, positive drug you can take to feel good,” affirms Clarke. “It turns out there are quite a lot of people who want to ride their bikes with people they like, and have a unique experience in a very beautiful place.”
Serious Saturday
Today’s the big ride day: time to cycle all the way around the island.
There are four levels, with Black being the most challenging, followed by Red, Blue and Green in descending order of effort. I’ve blithely assumed that I could probably join the Black, but that it would be more journalistically responsible to ride Red, so I can cruise in comfort and gather valuable insight from my fellow riders. Piece of cake.
But as soon as we start pedalling for real, my hubris congeals into panic. These riders are fast. I’ve ridden in groups before, but never at this pace, and before long, I’m tackling hills with breathless determination as the main group inches out of view.
Our man Tim [right] leading the pack.
By the time we roll gratefully into the first coffee-and-cake stop, my mind’s made up – it’s time to admit defeat and step down a level. Over petit fours and an excellent cup of coffee, I shamelessly abuse my media credentials to secure a place in one of the Blue groups instead, which turns out to be much more my speed.
Ride leader Adam has a speaker mounted to his bars, and a shared weakness for yacht-rock classics, so as we climb out of Ventnor and start heading for the Needles, ‘Cold as Ice’ by Foreigner kicks in and I can pedal like a new man.
Barrelling down the coast road, with the sun glistening on the chalk cliffs, it’s hard to imagine wanting to be anywhere else.
Party time
Three hours ago we were all sweat-drenched, starving and in medical need of a shower. By 8pm, the clean, well-suppered Joyride crowd are two cocktails in and ready to party – with none other than house legend David Morales behind the decks.
“You ride hard, you recover hard, you party hard, and you do it again – that’s Joyride for you,” says Clarke.
For a bunch of fitness enthusiasts, they can really put the shots away, and you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a women’s pro tour rider doing a backflip with glitter on her cheeks. I’m 50, and my legs hurt, so I slope to bed with a novel, but there’s no stopping this crowd.
The Final Countdown
Sunday is my favourite part. The sun’s blazing, there’s a genially sheepish vibe at breakfast, and the last ride is extremely chill. It’s a 40km spin, on gentle country lanes, and I’m lucky enough to be riding with Greg van Avermaet, a veteran of the men’s pro tour with an Olympic gold, and Adam Blythe, former pro and the voice of TNT Sport’s cycling coverage.
Slightly in awe, I turn to the woman riding alongside and ask what she does for a living. “I used to be pretty quick on a bike.” She’s Dani Rowe MBE, Olympic gold medallist in Team Pursuit. Christ.
Thankfully, she doesn’t mind not being recognised, and we have the most normal Sunday conversation you could imagine – house prices, kids, getting older – and it suddenly feels like the most natural thing in the world to be friends with legends. For a couple of hours, at least.
The route takes us back along the coast toward Cowes, and with all the sunshine and heat and hangovers, there’s only one thing for it, and everyone strips down to their bib shorts and dives into the deliciously freezing sea. I might look like a pale, hairy egg in the group photo, but I’m living the dream. They call it Joyride – and they absolutely mean it.
Joyride festivals are also hosted in Ibiza and Thailand. See more at leblanq.com
