ON THE ROAD
No stranger to uphill struggles, we sent !"" Greatest Cycling Climbs author, Simon Warren, to the Shropshire Hills, where the roads rarely go flat…
100 Climbs author Simon Warren doesn’t care much for flat roads, so he didn’t flinch when we asked him to ride what might well be Britain’s toughest 100km. With over 8000ft of uphill, could the formidable Shropshire Hills break this climbing junkie?
I’m a big fan of order, a real stickler for round numbers and symmetry. On top of that, there are few things I like more in this world than riding up hills. So when tasked by Cycling Plus to come up with a ride to match its brief of 2500m of climbing in 100km – I was giddy with anticipation. It would be a relentless, all-action ride, where ups followed downs with little else in between, and all to the tune of those big round numbers. I was undoubtedly their man.
All that was needed was a suitably dizzying setting to satisfy my task. A few sprang to mind but nowhere could touch the Shropshire Hills and the Long Mynd, home to the triple whammy of The Burway, Abdon Burf and Asterton Bank. Steep, yes, with the bonus of being easy on the eye, too.
Plan of action
Planning the perfect route is like baking a cake, throwing in the right ingredients in the right amount at the right time. You begin with your start and end points, choose the climbs you want to include and set them out in a sequence that avoids backtracking or repetition. After many permutations and a lot of tweaking, I believed I’d hit my required numbers, a rich sponge that with luck wouldn’t sink.
All I needed was a partner to tuck into this calorific beast with me. My usual ride buddies all had excuses – work, kids, the usual stuff. I’ll let them off, it was a Wednesday. I even chanced my arm on Twitter – nothing.
Local cycling clubs are often a good source in these situations so CP got in touch with Mid Shropshire Wheelers, who believed they had just the man. The applicant needed to be fit enough to complete the distance, but ideally, of a vintage and ability to make me look good on the hills.
Twenty-four year-old Luke Mellor has spent the last five years racing
with the British Continental outfit, Condor. Unfortunately for me he chose 2017 to take a sabbatical from his pro career, to work in his dad Dave’s Shrewsbury cycling shop, Dave Mellor Cycles, and gear up for cycle touring around Europe. He lived the dream as a pro but that world, and its relentless treadmill of hotels, flights and racing, is demanding and Luke is keen to enjoy a different aspect of life on two wheels. Which, apparently, extends to giving me a kicking on his Shropshire stomping ground.
We meet in Church Stretton, the ideal base for exploring this climbing playground. It’s early March and perfectly pleasant, not exactly warm nor cold, the sort of day that creates clothing conundrums. Two layers or three? A winter jacket or jersey with arm warmers? Should I ditch the overshoes? Full-fingered or fingerless gloves? Luke opted for no gloves at all, which, I felt, with temperatures not set to reach double figures all day, was nothing short of lunacy. He likes to feel his bar, apparently.
As on every ride with a new partner, you get a feeling for how the day’s going to go in the first few hundred metres. If I’m unable to talk or breathing through my ears the tempo is generally set for a torrid day, so I was relieved when we settled into a nice groove from the off.
The ‘Killer’ of this piece included all four ascents of the Long Mynd, the moorland plateau that dominates this region. The first comes in the opening 10km – the convoluted and testing route from Inwood through Woolstaston. Several sharp ramps pepper its slopes, which today were complicated by a punishing
breeze and a professional rider for company. The immediate drop down into Ratlinghope was a blessing.
Dirty work
Given the time of year I should have still been on my hardy, mudguardadorned winter steed but due to the occasion I thought it seemed right to bring out my best bike from hibernation for its first ride of the year. It was pristine – new bar tape, its fine carbon weave glistening in the morning sun and a chain you could eat your dinner off. Just 20 minutes on the Shropshire lanes later it looked like I’d dragged it from a skip. Lanes were sodden from an overnight deluge, scattering mud and debris to the four winds.
With the rather treacherous descent of the first climb of the Long Mynd behind us, we got our opportunity to tick off the second right away – the only one I’d never ridden. It’s Luke’s favourite and easy to see why. Once you get past the tricky opening kilometre it relents on the upper slopes and becomes a pleasure to ride. Like all the passages up to the Long Mynd, tarmac is barely more than a bike length’s across for a thrilling feeling of isolation. The scenery is beautiful; more than once we stopped to take photos and didn’t want to leave. But leave we must – we had a rendezvous with the fearsome Abdon Burf.
Despite calling these roads home and knowing them inside out, it was a surprise that Luke had never ridden Abdon Burf (otherwise known as Brown Clee Hill). I’m not sure how I feel about introducing such a horror. In the course of writing my books [ed – Simon has written several books on hill climbs, the most notable being 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs] I dish out, in Spinal Tap fashion, 11 out of 10 rankings to those hills that push the boundaries of suffering. You have to use them sparingly, to emphasis the insidiousness of the worst, and so far just four have received this dubious badge of honour. Abdon Burf deserves it, it’s truly hideous.
The first time I rode it, I was on my winter bike, which gave me an excuse to get off and walk. The one thing going for it is the lack of traffic, cars aren’t allowed. There used to be a railway line here, built
The scenery is beautiful; more than once we stopped to take photos and didn’t want to leave
in the 1900s to transport the stone mined from the summit off the hill. Quarrying stopped in the 1930s and the summit is now home to air traffic control radar masts. But what was bad news for one industry eventually proved terrific for another, as the rail track was tarmacked over to create one of the toughest cycling climbs in Britain.
Climbing begins in the town of Ditton Priors but it’s 2km before what you’d call the true climb gets underway. You’ll know when you get there because you have to negotiate a gate, and from there to the first cattle grid you’re faced with 800m of 20-25 per cent gradient without a single deviation, just a remorseless, tortuous straight line of pain. You just grind, slow pedal rev after slow pedal rev, without daring to look up out of fear for what’s still to come. Ignorance is bliss on Abdon Burf. Embrace the pain and relish the purgatory. It’ll pass, probably. I allowed Luke to take a bit of a lead – it was his first time – but his 28-tooth sprocket, compared to my 27, gave him a helping hand anyway.
No pain, no gain
However Abdon Burf hurts you – and you can bet it will to some degree – the reward at the top is payback – a glorious, a 360-degree panorama that’s a match for anywhere in Britain. It’s a pint-sized Mont Ventoux up there, towering above all, 1750ft up and the highest point in the whole of Shropshire. Given Luke’s penchant for sharp gradients, you can bet this rendezvous with the climb won’t be his last.
To compete the second half of our Long Mynd series we head back to Church Stretton. We take things steady along rolling roads, wary of the fact that two of the biggest, baddest climbs are imminent – The Burway and Asterton Bank.
The Burway, which has previous in the British National Hill Climb Championship, rises sharply out of Church Stretton for 3.2km. It appeared in 1989, won by a certain Chris Boardman, who tamed its sharp gradients in just 5 minutes 1 second, though the course stopped well short of the summit. It’s tough right out of the town centre and by the time you’ve passed the first cattle grid the gradients are hitting 20 per cent. It’s at this point where the principle function is no longer to cover ground but simply to stay upright. On and on it climbs, over false brow after false brow through the mesmerizing scenery until there’s nothing between you and the sky.
Dropping back down into Ratlinghope, in the opposite direction to earlier in the day, we then headed south in search of Asterton Bank. It’s here we hit a snag in our bid to hit our roundnumbered 100km, 2500m aim.
Plotting a route over the internet using maps and Google Earth never gives you the full picture and the damage the winter had done to the roads meant mud had rendered them difficult to navigate. Around each new bend revealed further mucky carnage, to the point where I had to lean on Luke’s local knowledge to re-route us along some cleaner roads. In doing so it added distance and elevation – ostensibly no bad thing but on this occasion a bugger for this project and my own OCD.
Still, I had bigger things to worry about, specifically the final climb of the day up the malevolent Asterton Bank and how I’d fare, this late in the ride, with a 39x27 low gear. It’s a precarious sliver of rugged tarmac, an asphalt scar up the viciously steep hillside that offers little respite and requires nothing less than total brute force to conquer. Again, the beautiful surroundings ease the torture somewhat, but it was barely halfway before I was begging it to end.
With Luke disappearing over the horizon, I began counting revolutions to the summit, stopping once before the steepest slopes subsided to take a photo (not tactical, honest). Banking right past the glider club, the worst is behind me but there’s still work to do before the summit and the promise of downhill. Over the last of a series of fake summits that tease the point where we can finally relax, we throw ourselves into the long descent back into Church Stretton. It’s the fourth and final time we’ve done so, pausing one last time to absorb the stunning view atop the Shropshire Hills, hills that, despite sore legs and muddy torsos, we’d ultimately tamed on two wheels.
You just grind, slow pedal rev after slow pedal rev, without daring to look up out of fear for what’s to come