Cheddar Gorge is an Alps stand-in for John Whitney
After its cancellation, John Whitney brings his high mountain sportive goal closer to home...
The Transalp organisers challenged its riders to take part in its ‘Local Roads’ edition
It’s been a strange year. If I wind back to last August, which honestly feels about 14 years ago at this point, I was accepting an invitation to ride the seven-day 2020 TOUR Transalp sportive. Giving the thumbs up to a near-800 kilometre behemoth is easy to do when you have a 10-month buffer until you find yourself at the sharp end of it. “It’ll be fine,” I always think. “Of course I’ll do the training. I’ve got almost a year!”
Despite such blatant bluster – and to my eternal surprise – I actually did put in something that could be recognised as, if you squinted hard enough, structured training. Hammering away on my turbo through the winter, I emerged into the new year optimistic for a ride in the Italian Dolomites that I could actually enjoy, rather than my usual stage race method, which is best described as being dragged kicking and screaming against my will.
And then… well, we all know what happened next. Despite taking place in mid-June, the Transalp didn’t officially succumb to the pandemic until the first week of May. In reality, for such an international event, the writing had been on the wall for some time. From the moment lockdown was announced in March until the race’s cancellation, my bike remained fixed to the turbo. In my head I’d already quit. Indoor training became less about hitting numbers and more about just getting some form of exercise, anything to keep the weight off, and stay fit and healthy, as the news kept reminding us of the links between being overweight and poorer outcomes to the virus. It was sport stripped of all enjoyment, down to a bare bones exercise in survival.
Goal fretting
This period had got me thinking about how vital goals are in this sport – in any sport. Getting on my bike remains one of life’s most simple joys, but there’s only one thing that’ll peel me out of bed on a cold winter morning and that’s the threat of bringing up the rear as the road points skywards at a Transalp, or such like. With the calendar gutted this summer, we were no longer training, just riding. Again, that’s no bad thing, but it’s not the path to improvement.
This goals wasteland did see green shoots, of a sort, in June, as the Transalp organisers challenged its competitors to take part in its ‘Local Roads’ edition – seven days of challenges that mirrored the original Dolomites course, wherever those that had signed up were in the world, from the lowlands of northern Germany to the mountains of Costa Rica. Whether it was a single day’s riding based around a rider’s favourite ice-cream stops, or matching the length and height of the race’s toughest stages, we, at last, had a target to meet. For myself, living in Bristol, there’s only one local destination that
could hold a candle to a day out in the craggy Dolomites: Cheddar Gorge. This three-mile long natural wonder, formed over a million years ago during the last Ice Age as melting glacier water slowly carved its way through the limestone below, is the highlight of any ride in Somerset’s Mendip Hills. So I charted a route that would not only take my up this much-loved climb, but also tick of the distance (105km) and elevation (1517m) of the final Transalp stage from Kaltern am See to Arco. Not exactly the toughest stage of the event, but when it’s you who makes the rules...
Seeking Providence
As luck would have it, the usual spot of an icecream van is where this ride starts, in Ashton Court a huge park just 10 minutes from the centre of Bristol. This is the mountain biking and gravel haven for Bristol’s off-roadies, though it’s also a handy destination for road cyclists, and its closed-to-traffic roads are a convenient way in and out of this side of the city, connecting leafy Clifton with Long Ashton. Heading south through Ashton Court gets your ride off to a freewheeling start but spells, should you return through it at the end, a savage finish. That said, you’re in hilly Bristol – there’s always some legbreaker or another lurking round the corner.
Speaking of which – Providence Lane. Placed within the first kilometre of my route, should I have wished I could have climbed laps of this sordid little stretch of tarmac 18 times and have ticked off the elevation required today. Had I done so, I’d have little to tell you aside from the various groans and howls of anguish that come with winching up an 8.3 per cent, 1km climb. From the summit you take a couple of undulating National Cycle Network routes – the 334 and the 410 – all the way to coastal Clevedon. On another day, the latter, known as the Avon Cycleway, is an excellent 138km circular route of Bristol, one that never strays into the city.
After a small spell winding through the outskirts of Clevedon, you soon end up on another NCN route, the Strawberry Line, in nearby Yatton – a fabulous, flat 17.3km and, aside from crossing the odd main road, off-road gravel track that takes you all the way to Cheddar. It takes its name from the eponymous fruity cargo that was carried from Cheddar on the old railway line that was once this route, before its closure in 1965, and was converted to a walking and cycling route from 1983. It’s a fantastic facility, because your cycling options to get from Clevedon to Cheddar are otherwise slim. There’s a long-time campaign, found at strawberryline.org.uk, to extend the route from Cheddar to Shepton Mallet,
You’re in hilly Bristol – there’s always some leg-breaker or another lurking round the corner
and add an extra bit from Yatton to Clevedon, which would take it to 50km, but a lack of funding has thwarted efforts to date.
After the sting of Providence Lane, it was a further 40km before my legs were tested again, which helped to tick off the necessary distance of my challenge, if not the elevation. It was the perfect appetiser, however, before the rollercoaster of the Mendips.
Gorging on it
In his book 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs, author and sometime Cycling Plus contributor Simon Warren bestowed Cheddar Gorge with the number one spot. It’s clearly spectacular and when I ride it with people who haven’t been here before, they’re always taken aback by it. As a first visit, it’s arguably better on the descent, as the lush rolling hills of the very English Mendips are abruptly swallowed up by this limestone masterpiece. With a few strokes of your pedals, you could be catapulted into the Dolomites.
Bearing all that in mind, you can imagine how busy it can get, so arrive at it in the middle of a summer’s day at your peril. All sorts are attracted to it, not just cyclists. You’ve got your bussed-in tourists, traipsing around oblivious to all as they go deep into an ice-cream cone; motorcyclists, trying not to let their patience get the better of them as they get held up by the pedal-powered crowd; boy racers, who seem to spend more time parked up than actually driving, standing at a distance ogling each others souped-up runarounds with the bonnets up; and the rock climbers, the coolest cats in town who hang quite literally above the fray. With all that it’s a wonder anyone is left satisfied, so it’s best to catch the climb either first thing or later in the evening, once the buses have vacated and, back at home, the boy racers’ tea is on the table.
I read Tim Krabbe’s classic novel The Rider during lockdown, the semi-fictional story of a racing obsessive’s passage through the biggest race of his season. One line that stuck out was where, at the start of the race as he was limbering up for the start, he imagined how “empty” the lives of others going about their business in the village were, in the absence of the bike from their existence.
Even as I did my best to cough up a lung on the steep early slopes of Cheddar Gorge, amid the Harley Davidsons, turbo-charged Corsas, crampons and 99s, I wouldn’t swap my bike for any of them. Actually, no, that’s rubbish - how many ice-creams are we talking about? At the summit, a plateau, followed by a wonderful descent down Old Bristol Road and straight into Wells, where you lose almost 200m altitude over
Arrive at it in the middle of a summer’s day at your peril. All sorts are attracted to it
three kilometres. This tiny cathedral city (population: 10,536) has some magnificent, historic architecture, including the cathedral and, connected to it, Vicars’ Close, the oldest residential street in Europe, which houses its choir. This has made it a popular period filming location for the likes of Poldark and WolfHall, though it’s perhaps best known in popular culture as the home of the fictional town of Sandford in the 2007 comedy and ITV2 staple Hot Fuzz, directed by Edgar Wright, who grew up in Wells. Hot fuzz would best describe my state on the way back up onto the top of the Mendips, via the frankly hideous Ebbor Gorge, which tops out at 17.4 per cent over its 2.4 kilometres and makes Cheddar feel like a molehill. At the summit it was time to enjoy the undulating goodness of the Mendips, through the village of Priddy, the hamlet of Charterhouse before the steep downhill into West Harptree by Chew Valley Lake. Finally, it was left, as ever, to Dundry Hill to stick the boot in. At 3.5km in length and 174m in elevation, it always does. This formidable challenge lies in wait at the end of most of my rides to the south of Bristol and while you can choose to go around it, time and energy is burnt doing so. Better to rip that plaster off quickly.
No, it wasn’t the Dolomites, but our countryside is no less special. The lockdown period and the solo escapes that its since provided have given fresh reminders of what awaits on our own doorstep. Not strange at all, then. Just comfortingly familiar.