Trooper Lane is a short, steep cobbled climb in Halifax. It makes a good claim to be the toughest cobbled climb in the Yorkshire area – possibly the whole of England. With contenders like Thwaites Brow, this is tough competition.
Trooper Lane towards the top
I saw Trooper Lane on the Cycle Show a few weeks ago, with Simon Warren going up and describing the climb.
I was reading ‘The Yellow Jersey Club‘ during the Tour de France. Short biographies of those who have won the Tour de France in the past couple of decades. It started off in the post-Merckx era with Bernard Thevenet (1975 – 77).
I don’t think I even knew Bernard Thevenet had won the Tour de France. So I learnt something new for a start. The man who dethroned Merckx was not exactly another Merckx. He had his own idiosyncrasies and perhaps lacked the steely determination and need to win that a Merckx or Hinault had. During his career as a rider he was very popular with the French public, which is surprising given his current relative anonymity. Interesting to compare to say Bernard Hinault who only really won the hearts of the French when he started to be less than invincible, towards the end of his career.
Today was good weather in the Yorkshire Dales so I drove out to Kettlewell and headed off for some of the big Yorkshire climbs.
I could have cycled from Menston, but driving to Kettlewell saved 50 rolling miles and it got me closer to the big hills. The surprising thing is that it’s not actually that much quicker driving to Kettlewell than it is cycling. 1 hour in the car. Cycling – 1 hour 20 minutes. Still I got to the first climb of Fleet Moss nice and fresh.
It’s the time of the year to start thinking about hill climb training. Whenever I start to do hill climbs in summer, there’s always part of me that thinks – why do I do this? Perhaps this will be my last year… But, after a few weeks, these thoughts fall away.
August is a gentle introduction to hill climb training, not 100% all out efforts, just a few unstructured rides – up and down different hills. If possible a chance to get into some different terrain before the more specific intervals up the same local hill.
After the end of TT season, it’s time to get used to the road bike and climbing up steep hills, with lower cadence, and using the whole body to drag you up the climb. It’s all very different to getting into an aero tuck and maintaining a metronomic cadence for 1-4 hours.
My parents live in Menston, which is perfectly situated for hill climb training. You can go anywhere in a 360 degree radius and find innumerable steep climbs to test your legs. Today, I threw a dice on the map and headed off south towards Keighley.
I said August is a gentler introduction to hill climb training, but for some reason, my first hill interval of the day – I chose Thwaites Brow a steep cobbled climb from the outskirts of Keighley, which could never be considered a gentle introduction – even with new a Emonda, tailwind and nice bit of sun.
Veloviewer
Strava
To be honest, I had forgotten how ridiculous this hill is. This is not a neatly maintained cobbled climb like you might find in the Tour of Flanders. This is a cobbled climb which looks like it was built by a few blokes in a rush to get back to the pub – throwing a few rocks randomly on to the 15% gradient. OK, I might exaggerate a little, but the gaps between the cobbles have to be seen to be believed. When there is this much gap, it seems about 30% of your pedal revolution involves pedalling on air. It’s hard to get the power down.
I managed to take a photo of the best-looking cobbles. I’m sure it was much worse when I was cycling uphill!
The other thing about the steep cobbled climbs is that the climb seems to have a mind of its own. It’s not a question of picking the right line. The climb throws you off-camber and all you can do is hang on. When you’re not eating your own handlebars to keep the cadence going, you might get ca hance to look up in the forlorn hope of picking a better line. But, even if you can see a slightly milder set of cobbles, you’re never guaranteed to actually make it. In places, there is a little bit of patchwork tarmac, but I often ended up missing these anyway.
If it wasn’t cobbled, it would be a tough test in its own right, but throw in the mix of random cobbles, and it’s really hard. It’s kind of a relief to get to the top – though, I can’t say I’ll be in a rush to go back.
They say heavier riders do better on cobbles. So how does it work for cobbled climbs?
Nearby Climbs
Hainworth Lane – just a few miles up the road – another cobbled climb
Stocks Hill
Distance: 1 mile
average gradient: 11%
At the top of Thwaites Brow I followed my nose – which means that I took random directions and got mostly lost. I headed up Oxenhope Moor and then hoped for the best. An unexpected bonus of getting lost is that purely by chance I happened upon a new climb – Stocks Lane.
Thanks to comments on this post Hill Climb Courses is that I found course V9919 is actually Stocks Lane. Halifax Imperial Wheelers have a hill climb on this lane on 26/09. – 900 yards of it average grade 10%. It’s a great little climb from the village of Luddenden. It’s a less intense climb than the neighbouring Halifax Lane/Luddenden But, it’s a nice steady 10% gradient with a double switchback.
Cycling Climbs of South East England is the first of the regional guides to road cycling hill climbs in England. It follows the same format as the best-selling 100 climbs. In fact the regional guide includes 50% of the hills in the first two volumes. It means for owners of the original books, there is repetition, but also all the climbs in one place with quite a few new ones too.
The South East includes Oxfordshire and some of the Chiltern hills I know and ride so often – climbs like Chinnor Hill, Muswell Hill and Whiteleaf. The South East also includes the south coast of Sussex and Kent – somewhere I very rarely cycle. Probably the last time I rode near the south coast was the Brighton Mitre hill climb on Steyning Bostal in 2006.
The regional guide didn’t give the same thrill as the first 100 climb book. Because many of the climbs are now well known. But, there are still a few new climbs, I’d not done before. Last week, I checked out Whitchurch Hill- from Pangbourne I’d never ridden around there before, despite being a mere 25 miles south of Oxford. I nice little 3 minute climb with good road surface. Oxford is certainly spoilt for climbs. I will probably end up buying the South West, because Oxford is as close to the Cotswolds as the Chilterns.
The South East doesn’t have all the big climbs of Yorkshire or Wales, but there’s certainly enough interesting climbs to make a good edition out of. It also features many climbs which feature in the London Olympics and Surrey classic (e.g. Box Hill, Leith Hill) And if you watch the Prudential Ride London classic, it shows you don’t need a col du Tourmalet to make an exciting race.
I spent a lot of time trying to find a light that would fit around an aero seat post. The most popular option seems to be to put a light under the saddle. But, I didn’t want that because I often have a saddle bag there or possibly a rear bottle.
Exposure rear flare
One of the few which seemed to fit was this exposure rear flare. It is a fairly bright light with 75 lumen red beam. It can be seen from quite a distance. It is quite popular amongst time trialists because it is quite small and aero, but gives off a reasonable light that can be seen from quite a distance.
The TT season is spluttering to an end. Last week, was a 10 mile TT on the A3. It was cancelled because of unexpected rain. After driving all the way, I thought I would go out for a little spin, it you can’t get a pb, you can always try steal a local KOM, it doesn’t make it worth while, but better than just sitting in your car. To be honest, my heart wasn’t in it, and going up the first hill my chain came off. I made the mistake of trying to put the chain on without getting my hands dirty. I tried to use some random leaves as improbably gloves. The problem is that I failed miserably and also, in the process, managed to knock off the Quark magnet from near the chain stay. Note to self – when putting chain back on – it’s always easier just to get your hands dirty with oil.
After wiping fingers clean, and generally messing around, I’d lost where magnet fell off, so the next 20 minutes was scrabbling around in the dark undergrowth to look for a small magnet. Why is it so hard to find small things when they fall off bikes? I took that as more than a hint to call it a day and head home. That was the last 10 mile TT of the season.
It was a great Tour de France. Nearly every stage was interesting, with full on racing the whole way through. I seem to remember years when half the Tour de France was predictable, flat sprint stages, which only came to life in the last 10km. The sprinters union may complain the tour has been ridiculously hilly, with relatively meagre pickings for the likes of Cavendish and Griepel, but for the viewer – classic style one-day races (cobbles, side winds and short sharp climbs) do make for intriguing and interesting racing.
It’s hard to imagine that in the 90s and early 00s, the Tour would put on massive long flat time trials. Amidst the near hysteria of Froome taking 60 secs from his nearest challenger in the Pyranees (60 secs he later lost in the Alps), who can forget the days of Indurain putting in six minutes to his nearest challenger in long time trials? Those years of Indurain and Armstrong domination were pretty much like watching paint dry. This year’s tour was not quite as finely balanced as we might have liked, but another mountain top finish in the Alps and the tour would have been on a knife edge.
I usually spend a lot of time trying to work out what kind of hill all the course codes are so this is a page with some of the info I have, but bear in mind it is incomplete, and possibly inaccurate.
Sometimes it is hard to find info on the course. If you have more info, or link to event website, drop us a line or leave a comment.
To enter hill climb click on name of event. Note some events, have separate event for J/W. Best to check at CTT site.
The most helpful thing to know is roughly how long a hill climb will take. Time of 1st ride is either CR or estimate CR for men. Some course records are from memory. But, it will provide a rough guide to kind of hill
