Video: Ben Travis Hits the Streets of London on his Trials Bike

In September 2019, Mark Westlake and I decided to take a trip to London to make a follow-up to my original 3 days in London edit (you can watch the first here), and things started so well. We got a couple of clips in the bag and on the second day I was feeling confident. Then disaster hit...


Having hit the wall ride a couple of times I felt I could go a little higher, so went back up for another run. I gave Mark the heads up, and started cranking the pedals...then I remember being on the floor realising it hadn't gone to plan. It didn't feel great but I thought I'd gotten away with one. I managed to pull myself together, and we decided to head back to the hotel after grabbing a bite to eat. About an hour later, we were riding through a fairly wealthy part of London and I was pretty sure I was going to faint, so stopped to have a little lie down...


This didn't feel right, so I asked Mark to call an Uber so I could get to the nearest hospital. The A&E triage told me I probably had bruised ribs and would have to wait, so 5 hours later a doctor finally saw me and immediately rush me to the Major Trauma ward. Turns out I'd ruptured my spleen (Grade IV) in the crash, and I was losing a lot of blood. Thankfully I kept my spleen but needed a splenic embolisation, 5 nights in hospital, and nearly 12 weeks off the bike.

At the end of November, I got the all-clear. I was straight back on the bike and Mark and I returned to London in December 2019 to try and finish the project off. The weather didn't play ball, and nor did the security guards. I was chasing an ender clip for the video at the very least, but it just didn't materialise. We both went home frustrated, but after a couple of weeks, I had a plan to sit on the footage, and then get back down in the spring of 2020 to finish off...

Well, we all know how 2020 turned out...

Due to COVID restrictions, the stars never aligned for Mark and I to get back to London and finish the video. I've now changed bike to the Inspired Fourplay, but I didn't want to waste the footage, so we've finally pulled what we had together to make a short video and Mark also managed to snap some photos...





A massive thanks goes out to Mark for his help on this project, but more specifically getting me to the hospital, then sticking around London to sort me out as well as dealing with all my stuff. Big thanks also go out to my sponsors, Inspired Bicycles and Tartybikes, who really helped out with getting me / my bike home to Aberdeen.

Cheers for watching.

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