Tour of the Cornfields 2010 On a sunny Sunday in a car park in Bassingbourn Richard Stiff, Adi, Richard Emmerson & I met up for our first go at “The Tour of the Cornfields”, a 60 mile cyclo-cross event taking in a few roads & large stretches of the Cambridgeshire countryside. Richard E was on a mountain-bike and off-road biking is his thing. Adi’s bike had been assembled by Geoff the night before & was uncharacteristically clean.

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Those Wheelers who avidly read Cycling Weekly, may have noted the recent 8 page special on climbing. One statistic that perplexed a few riders was that world-class-climbers weigh in pounds no more than twice their height in inches. So a 6ft rider should weigh no more than 10st 4lbs, or exactly what I weigh at 5'' 7"! 

So grow 5", or lose 10lbs in 7 days Pete.

This was timely advice as I was due to take on the climbs of the North Pennines at the end of May, in preparation for an attempt on the deadly duo of the Wrynose and Hardknott Passes in Cumbria, rated in the Top Ten Hardest UK climbs by Simon Warren, author of '100 Greatest Cycling Climbs', available from all good book shops now.

I spent 5 days at The Old Barn B&B in Middleton in Teesdale, County Durham, http://www.theoldbarn-teesdale.co.uk/  just north of the Yorkshire Dales and this proved to be an ideal base for some serious climbing fun. I had printed out some circular routes from the excellent website

www.northpenninescycling.co.uk/cycling_county_durham.htm but I found so much of interest in the area that I combined the main climbs with chosen places to visit in my cyclo-tourist mode. The roads which link Teesdale and Weardale over the moor tops provide mainly Alpine-gradient climbing over several miles, which was very enjoyable but hardly fitting for the much more severe gradients to be tackled in Cumbria later on. Most of the Pennine climbs attained 500 - 600 metres, the highest being to Killhope Cross at 2056ft, the highest climb on a classified road, (A689) in England. And the area has an abundance of good tea stops, always important to a Wednesday Wheeler!

Teesdale itself is simply beautiful, and a haven for nesting wading birds such as curlew, oyster catcher, lapwing, golden plover, redshank and common sandpiper. The wildflowers of Upper Teesdale, (which is reputed to have a  climate similar to Reykjavik in Iceland), are stunning; some are remnants of the last Ice Age, 11,500 years ago, maintaining a foothold ever since. The very rare Spring Gentian which put on a fine display for my camera is found nowhere else in the UK. This gem only opens up in the sun; a previous guest at my B&B had waited 4 days for the sun to shine just so he could capture the flower on camera. That's dedication for you.

For me, the sun shone, which meant shorts and jersey cycling for the first time this year, excellent. I suffered two showers in the 5 days but soon dried out again.

My base at Ambleside in Cumbria was just a few miles from the famed Wrynose and Hardknott climbs. I approached these from the east though Little Langdale and was soon looking at the Wrynose climb dead ahead. I suppose I stayed seated for half the climb, then the 25% gradient meant out of the saddle strains for as long as I could manage, which wasn't very far. The severity of this climb saw me taking five stops on the hill, so my heart could retreat back into my rib cage, which is no way to tackle a climb at all. Good for taking photos though.

I seemed to be a source of much amusement to the occupants of the many 4 x 4s, who were proving their machines on the Pass. A tourist 'Mountain Goat Adventures' minibus also came trundling by, with more leering and laughing at my plight as I hunched over the handlebars drawing oxygen in through almost every orifice.

Over the top the plateau stretched away to Hardknott in the distance. As I drew closer I was reminded of ants climbing a blade of grass, as the vehicular procession angled impossibly up the zig-zag climb. It looked for all the world like a giant helter skelter had been pitched into the hillside for every mad biker's amusement. I had already decided that this 30% climb was beyond anything I was capable of; from the Wrynose struggle I judged this next one to be a 20-stop climb and I was just not worthy of it. As if to cement my decision, the heavens opened and it rained, the sort that stair rods are made of. The climb disappeared as the cloud lowered, so I have no photos to show the full horror of the wall in front of me.

Happily there is a left turn here, at the foot of the climb, which runs down the lovely Duddon Valley, so I was more than pleased to take it. Lower down in Seathwaite I took refuge from the rain in a pub and relaxed with a pot of tea whilst I dried out.

 In his CW article Simon Warren concludes that the severe gradients of many UK climbs provide much more of a physical challenge than the longer, manageable Alpine-style European climbs and I have to agree with him. I was fine on the longer drags in the Pennines but Wrynose and Hardknott require superior fitness, greater strength, a super efficient CV system to clear the lactate which builds up so quickly, and it probably requires youth. My lowest gear was 30 x 28 but still not low enough. The only Wheeler I know who has made a fist of these two climbs is Mike Bowen. To repeatedly have to stop to recover is not what climbing is all about. A bike is designed for forward propulsion and when the rider is stopped, hunched over the handle bars, gasping, it might as well be a fence. I could have donned a pair of boots and walked up faster.

The other realisation was that no amount of doing reps up the Suffolk blips, can possibly prepare a rider for serious climbs in real hill country. A few months on the Pennine drags would see a marked improvement in how I tackled those hills, improvement that could never be made down in Suffolk.

I will return to Teesdale though, excellent cycling country, there are quite a few climbs that I didn't get the chance to do this time. What a super part of the world it is.

 Now then, about that 10lbs!

 Peter Heath