The Day London Changed for Cyclists Forever

The Day London Changed for Cyclists Forever

In 2012, a tragic accident in London took the life of a well-known cycle courier. This is the story of Henry Warrick. Let’s go to Liverpool Street. I’m not sure why, but I’m a little more nervous about this one than I have been in a while. Maybe it’s getting back out onto the main streets of London that I haven’t done for a few weeks at least. So, that could be it. Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. Try and ensure the same fate doesn’t fall upon me as it did to that courier. [Music] We are just heading into the area of our destination number one today. We’ve got here, made a safe journey just about. It’s a bit chaotic. It’s a Saturday. It’s sunny. There’s people everywhere and there’s cars everywhere. Got to keep my eyes peeled in every direction today. It’s a 360 day out. We’ve effectively come to London’s land of cyclists. This is traditionally where you’ll see cycles everywhere in London. Shortage, Hackne, Liverpool Street, those sorts of areas. And I am in fact on the C11 cycle lane right now. by the just passing the artillery arms. And there you can see the city dead ahead. And that’s kind of where we’re headed. There you go. Finally into the big city. This is a clue as to the first place we are going today. It’s just up here on the left. Here we go. Stop one of today’s tour. [Music] Of course, we got to take the alley to get there because that’s what we do. Seek a shortcut. Oh, there it is. Rather unusually, we have come to a cemetery and this is the site of Bunhill Fields Cemetery burial grounds. The name Bunhill is thought to have originated from the word Bonehill. Don’t have to have much imagination to think what that means. And there are 123,000 people buried here. Some of which are rather wellnown. Some of which are names we’ve come across in the past on this ride. So, let’s go and see if we can find some of them. There’s no cycling in here, at least on this stretch. So, I’m going to be good and obey the rules for a change. It is quite an impressive place actually as cemeteries go. It’s one of the oldest ones. Um, they closed it down through concern about public health and that sort of thing. And it’s thought to be one of the last graveyards that was used in the city of London until they closed it down and moved them further out to places like Highgate Cemetery and Kenzel Green, Kenzel Rise, that sort of thing. Huh. Well, who we got here? Here lies with a Y Mary Page. Okay, so there’s going to be quite a few names that we do and don’t know. This is one I don’t know, but interesting that they’ve used old English there with a Y for lies. This cemetery, Banhill Cemetery, is in the burough of Islington, but it’s quite very far south, almost on the border with Oo, I don’t know actually. It feels like it’s far south Islington, let’s put it that way. Look at it. Absolutely cramp-acted in there. They are overgrown, packed in head to toe, more than any other cemetery. I mean, if you even wanted to walk between them to visit them, you couldn’t. Now, there are actually quite a few notable graves here and tombs. So, in a moment, I’m going to go and have a look around and see if I can find some of them and give you a little look of who’s here. And they’ve turned the whole place into a sort of a public gardens as well. It’s It’s now open to the public. And look, it’s a really really peaceful place. As I suppose most cemeteries and graveyards are, but total peace in the middle of a chaotic city right here. I love the old wording on some of this stuff. Look at this. In this vault repossesses the Reverend Theopoulos Lindsay, later St. John’s College and sometime vicor of Catric in Yorkshire. but repossesses as a word. How cool is that? Imagine you lived here overlooking this lot. It’s clearly a place that people come for a bit of peace to get away from the chaos of the city. I didn’t notice half these people till I got here. You got one there, a couple there, people down there, there, there, over there. Everybody’s even over there. Look, they just sit quietly. It’s the perfect way to escape the madness and the noise. just a 100 meters or so away. It’s fascinating. It’s one of the great things about London. It’s got all these little tucked away places that you can, you know, you only get to know after time. And I didn’t know about this. Bunhill Fields here or Bone Hill as you can imagine. Maybe they brought old bones of the dead here perhaps at one point cuz this has been a cemetery since the 1660s. How old is that? And you can imagine them just sort of dropping off bones here. And you I can always imagine if this was just a field where they dumped bones and perhaps all these buildings around around us surrounding us now, none of them would have been here obviously. So it might just have been a field area where they decided to start burying people and yeah carried on ever since. It’s full of nonconformists, radicals and intellectuals and clergymen and people like that from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. And they eventually closed it due to health concerns about I guess when London, Victorian London was getting busy, you know, and they were dropping bones and bodies off in there. There was plague and all sorts of illnesses. They decided, yeah, we need to stop burying them here, you know, move them further out. And that’s what they did. It’s so flipping nice here. I don’t want to move. It is incredibly peaceful and calm. I just I just want to soak it up for a bit. It’s fantastic. What the hell was that? It is either some sort of famous flyby thing going on today or we’re getting ready for war. One or the other. Hopefully, it’s the first one. The [ __ ] is going on? Well, that wasn’t the red arrows. If you think about it and you position yourself, you can get a better spot. You know, you have to know the Yeah. I’m going to try and get some I don’t know how long this is going on for, but I’m going to try and find a spot somewhere. Do you know what it’s for? Like street like beach. Yeah. I guess down with the river will have a better view, won’t you? It’s going to be a bit more open. But sometimes it just depends cuz obviously they come in this way. Yeah. They go in Here we go. Oh, it’s them. Red arrows. Awesome. What a result. It gets me every time I see that. That’s fantastic. Oh, look at that. Wow. That makes you feel good when you see wings like that, doesn’t it? It does. There you go. Sort of random things that can happen in London. You get to see the red arrows fly over for whatever reason. Brilliant. Heat. Heat. [Music] Okay, I can’t believe this. I have accidentally stumbled across probably the most ultimate in brutalist architecture in London. Here we have Barbcin. Oh boy. I wasn’t planning on doing this today and I’m not going to do it properly. We’re just going to do a little flyby and show you some brutalist architecture of the of the barbin. And just to give you an idea of how it fits into everything around here. Okay. Brand new modern glass buildings everywhere. 1950s style barbecue all of this lot. Oh, hang on. What are we What are we seeing? Let me through. Absolutely awesome. We are very lucky today to see that whatever it was. Right. Just up ahead is the junction where Henry Warrick actually died. So, I’m going to my plan is is to ride the route and come at it from a few different directions to get a feel for what happened, what might have happened on that day. Let’s keep going. Now, you can see the city right ahead. It’s a lot quieter today. Obviously, it is a Saturday and there’s a lot less cars around as I suspected. You know, probably possibly a Monday or a midweek early morning that might have happened. It’s going to be a hell of a lot busier that time than it is on Saturday, particularly cuz we’re here in the city. Like nobody’s working today. Pretty straightforward. So we got Liverpool Street on our right hand side now. And we’re approaching the junction where apparently Henry would have been coming up to this junction in this direction, I think, and a coach actually turned left on him, which I imagine as we get up to it, you’ll see what I think may have happened. So, I think perhaps he was going straight on. This is my thinking. He would have been going straight on here. Now, this is a new cycle then. This wouldn’t have been here. He’s going straight on. A coach may would have come up from behind him and coach would have turned left on him here. So, if a coach had come up behind him and turned left on him there would have taken him out on that bend. That’s what I suspect may have happened. I might be wrong, but if he was on his fixed wheel turning it down that direction, he might not have had a chance to turn in time or to stop in time. Henry was one of the most experienced cyclists and cycle couriers in the London area. They say in Europe even he worked for Rico Logistics and he was zipping around London most of his life. He used to ride in from a place called West Drayton. And West Drayton, if you go back to the very beginning of my videos, you’ll see me in West Eling. And West Drayton is beyond that. So that is a fair old ride just to get to work even before you get here. And then he would get to work and then he would do his shift delivering parcels and probably important paperwork all around the city of London. And it said that he would ride typically 100 miles every single day. So that makes him without doubt experienced and he made it to 53 years of age doing that job. So obviously the guy knew what he was doing. But somehow even the best of cyclists can come acropper at a major junction like this where you got big vehicles like this turning left and right, going around, people crossing the road everywhere, chaos going on. And it’s a Saturday here. It’s not even a busy day today. It’s not busy at all. Imagine this at rush hour. be completely crazy. So I think he was coming that way. He wanted to go straight on perhaps and my coach came from around there and turned on him this way. Canadians, we’re talking to you today. One of the reasons we are doing this is that one of my viewers sent me a message said he was interested in seeing a particular story. And the story is of Henry Warrick the courier who sadly died at that very junction right there here in Liverpool Street in the center of London. And the story came to light because the viewer I assume may be Canadian or is a big fan of the Canadian band the Bare Naked Ladies. And the Bare Naked Ladies I didn’t realize this but the singer is a guy called Ed Robertson. And Ed bit of a adrenaline junkie I suppose. Ed had a series called Eds Up. And Ed’s Up was about Ed the Adrenaline Junkie trying different jobs around the world. And I believe it was on the last episode of the last series that Ed Ed Robertson was given the task of being the job of a cycle courier for a day in London. This was in 2009. So Henry was his mentor for that day. And there are a few YouTube clips on there of Henry actually getting uh Ed up and rolling, getting him started that they had a crappy old bike lying around and took taking him out onto a few test runs on the streets. And apparently this was the series of the episode that Ed was most concerned about. And I don’t blame him. Being a cycle courier in London is no joke. Back in those days, they probably put a a lot more risk involved in it. there would have been a lot more risk involved in it back in those days cuz I think since then there’s probably a lot more safety measures gone in place for cyclists with their own traffic lights and little traffic lanes and that sort of thing. So this is the story of Henry Warrick and Ed Robertson who rode with him that day in 2009 in London before sadly Henry died just there the 3rd of February 2012 at 53 years of age. RIP brother RIP to a fellow 50 years cyclist. Well, that’s it for part one of the Henry Warrick story, Button Hill Fields and Liverpool Street. Come back next week for part two when we discover some architectural masterpieces, fascinating history, and true hidden gems. I’ll see you then. [Music]

Join me on a powerful cycling journey through Liverpool Street London, exploring the tragic story of Henry Warwick – a legendary cycle courier who lost his life at this very junction in 2012. This emotional ride combines hidden London gems with a tribute to one of cycling’s unsung heroes.
In this episode, I cycle through the streets where Henry worked daily as an experienced courier for Rico Logistics, covering 100 miles every single day for years. At 53 years old, Henry was mentoring TV personalities and sharing his incredible knowledge of London’s cycling routes – until that fateful day on February 3rd, 2012.

🚴‍♂️ What You’ll Discover:

The exact Liverpool Street junction where the accident occurred
Hidden gem: BunHill Fields Cemetery – London’s historic “Bone Hill”
Stunning brutalist architecture of the Barbican
Red Arrows flyover (unexpected bonus!)
The connection to Barenaked Ladies singer Ed Robertson
Real cycle courier life in London

From the peaceful graves of 123,000 souls at BunHill Fields to the chaotic traffic of Liverpool Street, this ride reveals London’s contrasts while honoring Henry’s memory. As someone who rode from West Drayton daily just to get to work, Henry embodied the dedication and skill of London’s cycling community.

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#londoncycling #cyclecourier #HenryWarwick #liverpoolstreet #londonhistory #cyclinglife #urbanexploration #cemetery #barbican #cyclingsafety #londonstreets #cyclingcommunity

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Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:47 Cycling into London
01:34 The Land of Cyclists
03:10 Bunhill Fields Cemetery
06:00 Peace among chaos
08:36 A Royal Flyover
10:02 Red Arrows Fly over London
11:22 Barbican Brutalist Architecture
12:12 Military Drive By
13:00 The Henry Warwick Story
14:10 The Junction at Liverpool Street
16:12 Canadians and Barenaked Ladies

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