The 99 Index: Every Ice Cream Stop on the London to Brighton

Brighton Palace Pier, the finish line. Photo by Janice Kwong on Unsplash.

The London to Brighton Cycle rolls out on Sunday 13 September 2026 - roughly 97 km from the capital to the Sussex seafront, with Ditchling Beacon saved up as a sting in the tail at the 87 km mark.

The organisers have thought of the essentials. In their words: "There will be water stops along the route where you can refill your water bottles and take a breather. There will be toilets at the start and finish and at all the water stops." Hydration: handled. Comfort break: handled.

What nobody hands you at a water stop is an ice cream. And on a warm September Sunday, grinding up the Downs, an ice cream is not a luxury. It is fuel, morale, and a reason to keep turning the pedals, all wrapped in a cone.

So we did the research for you.

The method: a very narrow search

Ice cream is an impulse buy. You will not detour half a mile down a side street for a Solero - but you will absolutely stop if there is a freezer within a few metres of your front wheel. So we loaded the GPX into PitStopper and turned the search radius right down to 50 metres. Not "somewhere near the route." On it.

Then we searched the freezer network: petrol stations, convenience stores, supermarkets and bakeries - the four places that reliably keep a chest freezer of Magnums and Twisters by the till.

Here is what is within 50 metres of the London to Brighton line:

• 39 corner shops (convenience stores)
• 5 supermarkets
• 5 petrol stations (garage forecourt freezers, open early)
• 5 bakeries (for when you want a proper affogato, not a wrapper)

Fifty-four cold-treat stops you will pass close enough to touch, without adding a single metre to the ride.

The catch: it is all at the ends

Counting them is one thing. Seeing them on the map is where the plan actually appears:

The pins pile up at both ends and all but vanish in the middle. The first 15 km out of London and the run into Brighton are paved with shops. The stretch in between - the quiet lanes through Surrey and the South Downs, exactly the part where you will most want a cold drink - is an ice cream desert.

This is the actionable bit. Stock up on the way out of town, or at the last shop before the lanes go rural, because the freezer you skip in Coulsdon is the freezer you will daydream about on the climb to Ditchling Beacon. There is no garage on the Beacon.

The same story, as a chart

The map shows you where. PitStopper's new POI Graph shows you how far. We widened the search to 500 metres and plotted every candidate stop by distance along the route (left to right) against how far it sits off the line (up for the left of the road, down for the right):

The two shaded bands are the graph flagging your resupply gaps automatically: a 26 km stretch and then a 15 km stretch with nothing in view. That is the middle third of the ride, through the quiet lanes and over the Downs, with barely a shop either side of the road. Points hugging the green centre line are effectively on the route; the ones drifting toward the edges are the "worth a small detour" stops. It is the ice cream desert, measured.

The good stuff: actual gelato

Freezers are for emergencies. For the real thing, we ran a second, fussier search - this time for dedicated ice cream counters (the ones OpenStreetMap actually tags as ice cream). PitStopper runs these queries against a live map database, so the answers are current, not a stale list.

Within 120 metres of the route: seven genuine ice cream stops, four of them within thirty metres of the line. Among them, an "ice cream van (summer only)" parked almost exactly on the route, a Moo Moo's, and an L'Esperienza del Gelato - close enough that stopping is barely a wobble of the handlebars.

And then, of course, there is the finish.

You drop off Ditchling Beacon, roll down through Brighton, and the seafront is one long parade of ice cream. After 97 km and the Beacon, you have earned the largest one they sell. Consider it the real finish line.

Do it yourself in two minutes

Riding a different London to Brighton route, or another event entirely? The same trick works for any GPX:

1. Load your route into PitStopper.
2. Drag the search radius down to 50 metres (or 100 if you are feeling generous).
3. Tick Convenience, Supermarket, Fuel and Bakery - your freezer network. Add Cafe for sit-down scoops.
4. Read the map. Where the pins thin out is where you carry a spare.
5. Open the POI Graph (in the POI menu) to see the same stops as a chart, with your resupply gaps shaded automatically.

The event will keep you watered and point you at a toilet. The ice cream, gloriously, is up to you - and now you know exactly where it lives.

See you on the seafront. Map data (c) OpenStreetMap contributors.