Baby's first alley cat race
Getting to know Sheffield with Fixed Queers
I have never in my life felt compelled to race my bike. My style of cycling is very much at a slow pace, admiring the views, stopping for snacks, and not covering too many miles.1
You still won’t find me entering what some would call a standard bike race — the kind with a start line, lycra-clad competitors pedalling it out shoulder-to-shoulder, trying to reach the finish line first. On road or off, this isn’t my scene. But it turns out there is a type of racing that I found immense joy in, and that’s an alley cat race.
But, before I delve into that, you simply must meet the new addition to my bike fleet:
I won’t go into detail (but let me know if you’d like me to in a future post), but this is a teeny tiny Thorn Audax frame with 26-inch wheels that Adam picked up, originally to harvest for parts, and ended up building for little old me. Complete with his signature swoopy bars and basket combo, it is absolutely adorable, and the fact that it actually has gears was a very welcome change to the singlespeed I’ve been hauling around this very hilly city.
So, what’s an alley cat race?
First, a gentle caveat: if you’re new to this, when you read about it you’re probably going to think, “wow, Mildred did that? That’s so cool. She’s so cool.”
I’m really not, but thank you in advance if that’s what you think. I am in fact the complete opposite of cool, and spent the entire day feeling like an imposter around all the effortlessly cool fixie kids.
Alley cat races are generally inner-city DIY events organised and participated-in by bike messengers, though they’ve opened up to a broader audience since the invention of the email started making that career largely redundant for many.
There’s no official start or finish line. Everyone who takes part leaves their bikes piled up in one area, and attends a briefing somewhere else, while race organisers attach a paper manifest to the bikes. Once it’s time to roll, everyone runs to their bike, reads the manifest, and then figures out their game plan.
The manifest sets out a series of checkpoints dotted around the city, and it’s up to you to get to as many of them as possible, complete the task set out for each (usually taking a photo of your bike in front of a specific landmark), and then making it to the final checkpoint before it closes. There’s no set route, you can go whichever way you want, and in any order that feels right to you.
The Fixed Queers Big Gay Alley Cat (12/04/25)
The race we did was the Big Gay Alley Cat, organised by Fixed Queers as a fundraiser for Trans Kids Deserve Better.
There was a prize for the first to finish, but there were also other prizes and side quests to complete, like photographing as many Pride flags as possible, and getting a picture of the Gay Tram (which we sadly didn’t see).
If you bear in mind that we only just moved to Sheffield a few months ago, you may have already foreseen how much of a challenge this would be - while we’ve been getting out and about and exploring the city by bike, the manifest was filled with places we’d never heard of, and I immediately set about marking them on Google Maps to try to come up with a route that made sense. Meanwhile, many of the natives set off immediately, knowing exactly where they were going.
Once we had a vague idea of how to attack it, we threw ourselves in. I very quickly felt grateful for having gears (though many folks were doing it on fixed-gear bikes), because I’m not at my fittest right now, and Sheffield is LUMPY!
I won’t give a huge breakdown of the whole thing, because in many ways it very quickly passed by in a blur, but here’s a summary of how it went:
We started out crisscrossing lots of other riders as we all ticked off the city centre locations, frequently crossing paths with our neighbour Chris (who won last year’s race).
We unfortunately forgot about the most northerly location until we’d done the city centre and were about to head south, which meant we had to go all the way back out to the starting point and far beyond it, putting us very behind time-wise.
We ran out of time and steam (I was the colour of a beetroot and my face was encrusted in salt - yum!), so we decided to sack off the final few locations in favour of getting a cold drink and a slice of cake, before crawling to the final checkpoint in Meersbrook Park, where we were tasked with doing our nails, and I am very pleased with my efforts, considering it only took five minutes on a park bench:
A great way to discover the city
Not only was racing around in search of checkpoints incredibly fun, but it was such a useful way to learn our way around the city by bike.
We found ourselves going through various familiar places, and quickly learning where they were in relation to each other, and discovering the best cut-throughs.
It also introduced us to some really interesting city landmarks, which I’ve since decided to look up and learn a little about them, so here’s what I’ve discovered:
The Dove and Rainbow is a rock pub and alternative community hub that hosts live music and a video game quiz night, which I will definitely be returning to.
I can’t find a huge amount about Queen Street; it may have been home to a foundry in the 19th century, but mainly I think it was included because we’re all a bunch of queens.
Yellow Arch Studios (the most northerly point that caught us out halfway through) has been around since the 1990s and is the birthplace of the Arctic Monkeys, as well as producing albums by Jarvis Cocker, Kylie Minogue, Goldfrapp, and others.
The red crown is round the back of the iconic Park Hill flats: a Brutalist housing estate that overlooks the city from atop a great hill, and is now an incredibly trendy place to live, with bars, restaurants, barbers and all sorts of indie businesses on its doorstep.
Sheffield General Cemetery opened in 1836 and is a beautiful place to wander. It gave me Highgate Cemetery and Arnos Vale vibes, and is somewhere I plan to return to explore on foot. We were specifically tasked with finding a noticeboard with a picture of Donna Summer.
Dempsey’s is Sheffield’s oldest gay bar, now 25 years old, and seems to be as notorious for its 6am closing time as it is for harassment, violence and abusive bouncers, if the Tripadvisor reviews are anything to go by. Not sure I’ll be heading there for a night out.
At the South Street Park Amphitheatre we were tasked with creating spoke cards, so I hurriedly did a little Pride flag. Turns out most other people did some form of this when they were all on display; I love it when a hive mind comes together.
The True North Mural by Rob Lee is on the side of The Forum Kitchen & Bar in the Devonshire Quarter. Prior to World War II it was a housing area, but it was heavily bombed in the Sheffield Blitz of December 1940. Now it houses Devonshire Green, a public space with a grassy amphitheatre.
The Snog by Pete McKee, one of Sheffield’s best known local cartoonists, was originally created for the 2013 Joy of Sheff exhibition. It’s on the side of the Fagan pub at the top of a big hill that we had to cycle up twice (because of our terrible route planning). Random fact: I saw Pete McKee in a cafe once.
The postbox outside the Lloyds building on Division Street was painted gold to celebrate local Olympian Jess Ennis’ gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics. It was vandalised a while back, but has since been repaired and repainted.
Gut Level (one of the few familiar locations) is a queer-led DIY event space and collective that hosts club nights, communal meals, creative workshops, and more. I haven’t been there yet because I feel too intimidated, being so old and boring, but I’m working up the courage to go.
Once the race was over, we hung out in Meersbrook Park for a while before heading over to Adam’s shop (Wobbly Wheel Cyclery) for a post-race BBQ and party that ended at the respectable hour of 8pm so as not to annoy the neighbours. It was lovely to see so many people enjoying the space, where there were veggie sausages on the grill, and a silkscreen printing station set up for DIY merch to take home (I’ve got a very patchy t-shirt job that I’m excited to wear).
Verdict: 10/10 unrivalled fun, would 100% recommend and will be doing again.
This wasn’t always the case, I used to relish long days in the saddle, and my record was 200km in about 13 hours (though I appreciate this still isn’t “fast”).
I'm so chuffed to read this; a gloriously fun and honest good time!!
This just sounds like the best way to spend a day exploring a city, whether you know it well or not! My brother went to uni in Sheffield and this has really made me miss visiting it. So good!