In my continued quest to ride the 100 climbs as found in the book by Simon Warren - 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs: A Road Cyclist's Guide to Britain's Hills - I found myself travelling up to Calderdale this week. There are some climbs that get recognition because of their elevation gain, some because of their steepness and some due to the beautiful national park surroundings. The first two climbs of my day in Calderdale get recognition due to a combination of their steepness and their jarring cobbled surface. If you're wanting to test yourself on cobbled climbs without needing to go over to Belgium or Northern France then Halifax is a fine place to start, as I soon found out. Like
Tag: 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs
Park Rash and other Yorkshire Hills
A few weeks ago I went up to Scotland for work. Yes, back in the days of being able to leave the house! For anyone reading this in years to come - that's a reference to the restrictions currently in place for the CovID19 pandemic! And as I always try to do, I went for a ride as a break to the driving on my way up. On this occasion it saw me stopping in Grassington with the aim of riding up Park Rash - Hill #45. Park Rash is a hill climb north of Kettlewell. So I chose Grassington as the target for my start point in order to give myself a little bit of a warm up prior to
Hardknott Pass, Wrynose Pass and other such Lakeland Hills
If you google Hardknott Pass you'll get plenty of pages about 'the hardest climb in Britain'. If you continue on into the forums you won't go far before you then reach discussions on which direction is harder; east or west? These latter discussions refer to Hardknott and Wrynose as a pair because you go up one side of them and there's kind of a plateau in between. Generally the discussions, as with so many internet arguments, come to no conclusion with plenty of support for both sides. So when I managed to get a few hours to ride in the Lake District I decided to plot a route that took in both directions of both climbs. To be honest I didn't
Lancashire Stop Off – Forest of Bowland
The UK doesn't have any alpine climbs; this is something that will remain true even after Brexit. What it does have though is plenty of short, sharp and very steep ones. Almost as if to make up for the lack of total elevation gain, the road builders factor in as much steepness as possible. Or at least that's how it seems when you're grinding your way to the top in a low gear, barely turning your pedals and feeling like walking would be faster. Fortunately in the Forest of Bowland I didn't encounter any of these! Nope, not at all. And after a punishing time in Devon a couple of weeks earlier it came as a welcome relief. 1517
Head to the hills, Day 2 – #ExmoorEpic
Day 2, early morning, the tarp and bivvy combination seems to be working a dream. I'm snug, I'm dry, it's raining, I got some decent sleep overnight, it's raining... Oh, no - it's raining. And so we have that dilemma moment; do I stay warm and dry where I am and slowly watch the time ticking by or do I get up and get wet packing everything away in the rain and starting the day's route in the rain? The answer is of course a scramble to find my phone, it will know what to do! Have I got a signal? Yes. Have a got a weather app? Of course! Will the rain stop? Probably, in about an hour. Time
Head to the hills, Day 1 – #ExmoorEpic
There really shouldn't be any need for an excuse to head into Exmoor for a couple of days of cycling. The north Devon & Somerset coasts host some outstanding scenery and provide a multitude of challenging hill climbs. However, for me the underlying purpose of the trip was to tick off some more of those hills in Simon Warren's book, numbers 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7 in fact. This along with the previous 45 that I'd completed so far would take me up to 50, a significant milestone for any sort of best 100 list! The fact that I could ride this as a two day trip with my cycling mate Phil and include a bivvy overnight by the
“I didn’t know about these hills” – #39 The Burway in Shropshire
The Peak District, The Lakes, Wales, Scotland, The Yorkshire Dales; I could go on. There are plenty of decent areas of hills in the UK, Meccas for the hikers and bikers alike. These are the most popular places, the National Parks, the commonly spoken of, the well written about and very much rightly so. I really enjoy hiking, biking, kayaking and camping in places such as these. But that familiarity for those places, wrongly leads many, including me it seems to assume that everywhere else is relatively flat and boring. 1436
Cobbles and Climbs – Swiss Hill
"STOP, just stop". "This hurts and you won't make it to the top anyway". "I don't have the right setup for this, this just isn't going to end well". These are all common thoughts that pass through your mind when emptying yourself on a really tough climb. You just don't expect it to be only 30 seconds into the ascent! That was Swiss Hill, number 71. 1387
Crashing through the potholes of Oxfordshire – The Chiltern Hills #23 & #24
Having chalked off a good few of the 100 UK climbs in Simon Warren's book, it's now getting harder and harder to find opportunities to climbs the remain ones. Previously I did so opportunistically, taking my bike with me while working in various parts of the country and knocking off two, three or four at a time in a well planned route. However the remaining hills are now singles or farther away. Or just in places I don't tend to visit. The exception being numbers 23 and 24 in the Chiltern Hills, these are less than a two hour drive from home and perfect for a day trip ride. 1369
Riding the highest surfaced road in Britain
For a hill loving, road cyclist these are the ultimate aims. To ride the highest road, to climb the longest climb, to achieve your maximum elevation gain, to test yourself on the steepest of gradients. It's the love of pushing yourself, of achieving the next level of difficulty that drives us on. Well the road that winds it's way up to the top of Great Dun Fell offers all of this and gives us an excellent surface, almost entirely free of cars on top. 1232