Beater shopping in London

Me and some friends have just moved down to London and are looking for the best places to go and buy some cheap road bikes and parts... any suggestions?

• I am aware of how generic and probably over-asked this question is.. but we live in central so we haven't come across anywhere at all yet.
  

my garage. come view.

Danny, the best place for you to buy something legally is at the regular police auction:

http://www.frankgbowen.co.uk/catalogue.htm

You can view the lots before auction day.

It bears repeating (and you may well already know this) that a lot of 'cheap' stuff offered at markets is stolen. There are also some shops which have in the past been found to be handling stolen goods. So be careful--if it feels dodgy, it probably is dodgy. A lot of people want 'cheap' and keep the stolen bike merry-go-round going merrily round. Good luck in finding something.

Once you're more settled, there are always a lot of good deals through the forum community, so you should have a look at that. Prices are not necessarily 'cheap' but generally fair, and people wanting to charge too much are often chided for that, much as I've also seen threads where it's been pointed out to people that they were charging too little.

From Oliver's link...

52 1 X Grey Hercules Nitro Bike
53 A Dawes bike in silver
54 5 pairs of jeans
55 - 57 are 3 similar lots
58 A large bag of clothing
59 a similar lot
60 Electrical cables as bagged
61 A Wildlife DVD collection
62 24 cans of Kestrel larger
63 A generator on wheels

Sounds like the conveyor belt from the Generation Game has fallen on hard times.

I've been to that place. It's ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuubbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbish.

@op
You need to go to some bike jumbles. There's one at LMNH this sunday. There are lots of jumbles worth going to.

Also buy things from here, esp from well known members who trade regularly and aren't known for selling on rubbish, nicked bikes or worst of all, rubbish nicked bikes. For instance JD's always worth asking! Also Vintage Bike Cave and Rob Sargent's shops are worth checking out. Happy hunting.

it never really occurred to me that people sold nicked bikes on here - I'm sure people try but I had assumed the forum would hound them back to the hole they came from....

Best thing might be individuals selling their own bikes maybe, rather than traders?

But there are also the guys who I think of as the "Dutch" traders, who are probably not Dutch but seem to come up with various north-eastern european bikes for sale in euro - e.g. rih, simplexNL, Brig7, maryann

or hilarystone