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London World Naked Bike Ride 2025

London World Naked Bike Ride

Last Saturday I photographed a couple of protests, went to a disappointing photographic exhibition, took a snap of the Red Arrows and found myself with time to spare to go and photograph the 2025 London World Naked Bike Ride at its start and then later on my way to my last protest of the day.

The first year I photographed this event was in 2006 and I came back to it in almost every year until 2014, then again rather briefly in 2019. Here I’ll post some of what I wrote about it on that first occasion and then my comments on returning to photograph it in 2019, and end with my thoughts about the 2025 ride. All the pictures in this post are from Saturday 14th June 2025.

Unfortunately Facebook’s “community standards” prevent me from publishing an album of my pictures there, but you can find a selection of images on my Alamy portfolio pages. Though you may have to search or browse a few pages to find them after I upload more work.

2006

People in over 50 cities around the world were taking place in the World Naked Bike Ride as a protest against oil dependency and car culture. In London. over 600 cyclists, along with a few rollerskaters, rollerbladers and others took part.

As a change, I congratulate the Met police for allowing the event (unlike the Brighton cops.) Police cyclists – looking rather over-dressed in their usual uniform – led the event in its ride around some of the busiest streets in central London, and kept riders safe from traffic. Most of them seemed to be amused by the event.

So too were the crowds in central London. Many obviously found it hard to believe the evidence of their eyes, but all I saw seemed amused and none offended. Riders handed out a leaflet explaining the purpose of the event and advising “if you don’t wish to see nudity, please avert your gaze – we’ll soon be out of sight,” but I didn’t see anyone following this advice. Indeed it looked like the event should attract even more tourists to the city.

I don’t have a great problem with nudity. I was brought up told we were created in the image of our maker, so feel it would be blasphemous to object about the display of the naked body, although generally we may find it more prudent to keep it covered, especially in our climate. As my pictures show, not all those taking part rode entirely naked: the invitation was to ride “as bare as you dare!”

Photographing an event like this could be awkward, but I recognised many of those taking part and they knew me. There were a few conditions, but only one person out of the several hundred made it clear she didn’t want me to take a picture, and of course I didn’t.

It was an afternoon when it was more comfortable to be without clothes than in them (so long as you had plenty of sun-screen) and it certainly made an interesting spectacle. I had chosen not to ride a bike, and just pretended to be one as I ran up Piccadilly fully dressed with the mass of cyclists. By the time we got to the top of Haymarket I was pretty much whacked, and continued by tube to Waterloo to meet the ride as it came up York Road and get a different viewpoint.

2019

I’ve never been too impressed by the protest side of this. It’s more a fun ride for people who want to ride around London with no or very few clothes on. For those of us watching on the streets it is certainly unusual and entertaining, and I think very few could be seriously upset by it. The normal response seems to be a lot of pointing and laughing.

Perhaps if it were more of a protest there would be more women taking part. This year the imbalance seemed even greater than previously, with perhaps 10 or 20 men for every one woman, though I didn’t try to make an accurate count. My pictures do tend to concentrate more on the women than the men for various reasons. To state the obvious, these pictures involve nudity. Please do not click on the link if you may be offended or if you are in a place where others may be offended.

2025

This year there were even fewer women on the ride which now seems to be dominated by male nudists, with some coming from the continent to take part. It has become an event very much more about “body positivity” than a protest about car culture and cycle safety. And it illustrated the huge anatomical variation of male members of our species.

A mere handful rode with political messages written on their bodies and even fewer with flags or posters on their bikes. There was little of the creative face and body paint and fancy dress which had enlivened earlier years. It’s an event that has lost much of its interest for me and is far more drab than my pictures, which concentrate on the things that still interest me. Perhaps this is an event which has outlived its times.

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London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

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Slaughterhouses & Naked Cyclists 2019

Slaughterhouses & Naked Cyclists: Five years ago today on Saturday 8th June 2019 I photographed a march by vegans through the West End, leaving them at their rally in Soho Square and photographing people taking part in the London World Naked Bike Ride on my way back to Waterloo Station.

Close all Slaughterhouses

Vegans were marching in London calling for an end to the breeding, fishing and slaughter of animals.

I’m not a vegan, and as my comments on My London Diary make clear I do not find some of the arguments that they make so forcefully to be well-founded or convincing.

As I state there, “Of course I’m against cruel farming practices, and much is wrong in various ways about some modern farming, but keeping animals and killing them for food or milking them can be done in a decent and humane way and one that has an important contribution to our environment.“

But I am an unrepentant what they call ‘speciesist’, believing that although other animals share many of our characteristics they are not as these vegans were chanting “just like us” and that our species is in important respects different.

But vegans are a good thing in that a plant-based diet certainly does make lower demands on the environment, and I’m happy to eat vegetarian food several days a week, though not to be either a vegetarian or a vegan.

Given the way things are going with a failure of societies around the world to respond adequately to the increasing climate chaos it seems quite likely that our species will become extinct. And the farmed animals which appear on many of the posters carried in this and other vegan protests will also die out. They are the product of centuries and more of breeding by us and most could not survive in the wild. Farm animals rely on farmers as much as farmers do on their animals.

But there is certainly no doubting the sincerity, anger and dedication of these vegan protesters and this is reflected in the many posters and placards and the anger of their protests which I think comes through in my pictures. I just wish more of them would show the same support for protests over human rights abuses too.

Close all Slaughterhouses

London World Naked Bike Ride – South Bank

The World Naked Bike Ride says it is a global protest movement with rides in cities around the world, raising awareness of issues such as safety of cyclists on the road, reducing oil dependence and saving the planet. They say “Let’s make the planet great again!”

And although for some it clearly is a protest, for many I think it is, as I wrote “more a fun ride for people who want to ride around London with no or very few clothes on.” And I can see nothing wrong with that as “For those of us watching on the streets it is certainly unusual and entertaining, and I think very few could be seriously upset by it. The normal response seems to be a lot of pointing and laughing.”

There were around a thousand cyclists “in various states of undress, some with face or body paint or slogans on their bodies” in the ride, having started from several places some miles away who converged on the South Bank to ride together past St Paul’s Cathedral and then to Buckingham Palace before finishing the ride at Hyde Park Corner.

The great majority of the riders were men. My pictures concentrate on those people who stood out because of their body paint or slogans which included a considerably larger percentage of the women taking part – and I think most of the men who had these were taking part with their female partners.

The WNBR dress code is ‘as bare as you dare‘ although footwear is obligatory for safety reasons. I don’t have a problem with nudity, but am aware when photographing this event that many publications would not use more revealing images, and try and ensure that at least some pictures have strategically placed handlebars or other objects. But my pictures of the WNBR from earlier years did get complaints from some American educators who blocked my site from their students. And on the front page for June 2019 I includeD the warning “These pictures involve nudity. Please do not click on the link if you may be offended or if you are in a place where others may be offended.”

If you go into London today you may well see this year’s ride. More from 2019 at London World Naked Bike Ride.

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Close Slaughterhouses & Naked Bike Ride

Close Slaughterhouses & Naked Bike Ride: I had mixed feelings about both of the protests I photographed on Saturday June 8th 2019. I began with the vegans whose ‘Close all Slaughterhouses’ march was calling for an end to the breeding, fishing and slaughter of animals and then covered the 2019 Naked Bike Ride.

Close all Slaughterhouses – London

It was a slightly uneasy gathering in Leicester Square for me as I felt rather out of place among a crowd of vegans. I’m against cruelty to animals and certainly oppose cruel farming practices, but I still eat some meat and rather more diary products as a part of a varied diet, and I think my shoes may have been leather and my belt certainly was. My lunch in my bag certainly contained both cheese and ham sandwiches and I’d buttered the bread, so I couldn’t eat it while covering the event.

Of course veganism makes a contribution towards reducing our carbon footprint, as vegetable production generally produces much lower amounts of greenhouse gases, although I think there are some exceptions to this. But I think if everyone became a vegan it would have some very undesirable consequences, not least in almost entirely removing currently farmed animals from our landscape. We might be left with just a few cows, pigs and sheep etc in rare-breed petting zoos.

I’d like to see an end to some agricultural practices which have been adopted to produce meat, and I now quite happily pay extra for free-range eggs and grass-fed beef. But some of the slogans on the banners and placards at this protest are I think over-emotional and misleading. Meat is not murder, we don’t steal milk from cows and animals are not “just like us” though they obviously share many characteristics. As I wrote “the human species is very clearly different in some respects.“

Nature may sometimes be fluffy and adorable, but it is also often “red in tooth and claw”, often killing most cruelly. Many animals are carnivorous, others like us omnivores.

I’d had enough of the vegans after listening to some of the speeches at their rally in Soho Square and walked away – I was in any case getting rather hungry and found a corner away from them to eat my non-vegan lunch.

Close all Slaughterhouses

London World Naked Bike Ride – South Bank

I’ve never been quite sure that the World Naked Bike Ride is really a protest. As I wrote in 2019 “It’s more a fun ride for people who want to ride around London with no or very few clothes on”, though clearly some of them do want to protest over various issues, including the safety of cyclists on the road, reducing oil dependence and saving the planet.

Nudity doesn’t worry me, though as a photographer I spend some time trying to take pictures which show the event without producing images which might offend the more prudish of editors and publications, which is not easy. I wouldn’t take part myself in the WNBR, but largely because our climate is seldom really suitable for being without clothes; of course not everyone on the ride was entirely naked, but I do feel the cold. So were I to decide to join the ride it would be ‘as naked as you can stand’ rather than ‘as bare as you dare’.

Like most of those watching from the pavements I find the ride both entertaining and interesting showing the incredible variation of the human form rather more emphatically than any normal street crowd.

But overall the ride is in some ways lacking in diversity, with relatively little representation of London’s ethnic communities and this year their seemed an even greater than previous gender imbalance, with perhaps 10 or 20 men for every woman. This isn’t truly represented in my pictures partly because of my greater interest in them, but also because a greater proportion of them have slogans or body paint.

I’d arrived late and didn’t take many pictures before the ride moved off – there are a few more on My London Diary. I didn’t bother to follow them or try to meet them later on their route but went to a nearby pub for a drink with a friend before making my way home.

London World Naked Bike Ride

Naked Bikers

I hadn’t gone out of my way to photograph the London World Naked Bike Ride, but the point where all the riders who start at a number of points around central London meet up for the final section of their ride was close to the station from which I get my train home, so it seemed to be worth taking a few minutes to cover the event.

The first London WNBR took place in 2004 but with very little advance publicity – I’d attended and photographed ‘Bikefest’ which it is associated with on the day it took place but remained unaware of it. In 2005 I was out of the country when it took place. So I first photographed this event back in 2006, when quite a few people I knew were taking part.

This year I think there was nobody I knew in the event, or at least no one that I recognised without their clothes on. The ride is billed as “a protest against oil dependency and car culture” and back in 2006 it appeared to appeal to many people involved more generally in environmental protests. The message of the ride has never been very clear to those watching it and I think over the years the participants have changed, and it now seems much more dominated by naturists and has a rather smaller proportion of women taking part. The total number of riders this year, stated to be 1300, was roughly twice that in 2006.

There are some problems in photographing the event. It take place on the public highway, where no one has any expectation of privacy – and indeed people ride naked to make a statement, but some have tried to restrict photography in various ways. Not that this has ever had any effect on the crowds of tourists who the ride surprises who almost to a man (and many women too) get out their phones and take snap after snap.

But while the legal position on taking photographs of the event may be clear, there are problems in publishing the images in some media and particularly on platforms such as Facebook. I try hard to take at least some pictures with discretely placed saddles and handlebars.

I’d had enough after around 15 minutes and didn’t bother to try and follow the cyclists after they had moved off, though it would have been fairly easy to catch them several more times as they cycled around central London. But I went to a nearby pub with a friend I’d met photographing the event, and then on to cover another event. Or at least to try to; I arrived outside the Home Office at the right time on the right day to find no one there. I waited for a bit, checking the details on my phone, but after waiting for 20 minutes caught a passing bus to Vauxhall for the train home.

More pictures from the 2019 London World Naked Bike Ride.

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