More than 150 students joined the annual bicycling drinking binge yesterday, students cycling from flat to flat and downing a jug of beer at each stop.

In something of an unofficial tradition, fires featured regularly along the way, and the Fire Service and police were called to a Hinau Street, Riccarton, flat – colourfully named the Hinau Hilton – after students torched an old van yesterday afternoon.

The Press found a couple of late-stayers among the mess of charred bicycles and shopping trolleys littered around the burnt-out van. They described the blaze as one of the finest events in the Engineering Society's calendar.

"It was fantastic," fourth-year student Murray Chesterman said. "We had two fire engines turn up."

Students held up traffic while cycling between flats, careening across suburban intersections and waving their beer jugs in anticipation of the next fill.

The group shrank as the evening chill settled, but at least 100 students warmed themselves by starting another fire in the backyard of an abandoned student flat in Brockworth Place.

Paralytic Pilgrimage organiser David Brockett, who phoned the Fire Service, said the students were doing their best to behave.

Firefighter Paul Burns was unperturbed by the call-outs, saying he had no problem with the event.

"It's the most responsible one I've seen, and I've seen a few," he said.

Senior Sergeant Trevor Pullen said police were not concerned as long as students acted within the law. They had arrested one student for disorderly behaviour early in the afternoon after he refused to get off his bike inside Riccarton Mall.

The police had really an easy job and the students were helpful.