Steepest Bit of Hill in the UK ... That You Know Of

Berk Bonebonce

Road up to Riber, overlooking Matlock Bath in Derbys. Road sign says 20%.

Anonymous

The kerb outside my house, it's nigh on vertical!!! :shock:

mroli

http://www.roadcyclinguk.com/gear-news/ ... /5151.html

Long Mynd, but from the other side than in the book is meant to be the steepest 1mile average road in the UK.

Feltup

NapoleonD wrote:

The kerb outside my house, it's nigh on vertical!!! :shock:

My kerb is bigger than your kerb

Splottboy

1. Near Bangor, through a ford, then to a T junction. Trackstack or fall off are the options!

2. Top of Y Drym/The Drum, above Abergwyngregin. Old Roman road. Stoooopid steep, but you are close to 2,500 ft though.

3. Nefyn to Trefor, Llyn Paninsularcoast road. Steep, then steeper...

TwistedSpirit

The back road between Rosedale Abbey and the village of Hutton-le-Hole is Chimney Bank, Britain's steepest motorable road at 1 in 3, or 33%. Plenty of roads have 1 in 3 signs, but this is the only genuine article.

will2580

yeh chimney bank is the steepest i know of in my area. and it keeps going for about a mile. not all of it at 33% but still quite steep

Matt the Tester

jubilee hill in Trough of Bowland is the steepest one ive managed to get up. bloody steep lol,didn't have any Signs sadly.

Pross

Constitution Hill in Swansea, 'cobble' too and on this year's ToB.

There's a road in North Wales that is supposedly the steepest in Britian but you can't legally ride up it as it is one way going down the hill.

From Guiness Book of Records (apparently, but cut and paste from another website)

Steepest British road
The steepest motorable road in the British Isles is the unclassified Chimney Bank at Rosedale Abbey, N Yorks, which is signposted ``1 in 3''. The county surveyor states that it is ``not quite'' a 33% gradient.
An unclassified road at Ffordd Penllech, Harlech, UK, officially described as not suitable for motor vehicles, is 1 in 2.91 at its steepest point.
Steve Barnard adds: Incidentally, the steep road in Harlech has a standard gradient sign at the top saying one in two and a half. Having walked up it quite recently, I'd debate the quoted 1:2.91 - it's steeper than that. It's worth noting that for railways a gradient quoted as one in 50 has a sine of 1/50, whereas road gradients are quoted as the tangent - so a 1 in 50 on a road isn't quite as steep as a 1 in 50 on a railway. At shallow grades it doesn't make a lot of difference, but if the 1:2.91 is measured ``railway-wise'' (the easiest way to do it on the ground), then it's tan(arcsin(1/2.91))=1/2.73 ``roadwise.''

GiantMike

Feltup wrote:

NapoleonD wrote:

The kerb outside my house, it's nigh on vertical!!! :shock:

My kerb is bigger than your kerb

But probably no steeper.

Pross

I'm assuming we are talking roads here as the steepest bit's of hill I've seen in the UK are over vertical (is that steeper than vertical :? ).

outofbreath2

Glad to see no-ones mentioned Blissford Hill, New Forest. Doing it on Sunday and I think I'm making it worse in my head than it really is.

... and why do photos not do hills any justice...?

Cleat Eastwood

I had a guinness the other night. 3 pound 50. Thats was a bit steep.

ademort

Topics like this make me sick we dont have any hills. I dont even have a kerb :oops:
Ademort

Cleat Eastwood

ademort wrote:

Topics like this make me sick we dont have any hills. I dont even have a kerb :oops:
Ademort

I hope you have guinness otherwise life must be unbearable for you

tigerben

bikeroutetoaster.com lets you use google map to measure distance / height and thereby deduce gradient.

Only discovered the site a couple of days ago. it is genius.

I ahve been using it to check my local climbs... sadly they are mere pimples (10%) and not worthy of posting...

mroli

ademort wrote:

Topics like this make me sick we dont have any hills. I dont even have a kerb :oops:
Ademort

Don't expect us to cry for you - you've got canal sides. They're steep (especially if you fall in a canal). And you've got TdF havoc causing roads too!

disquieting_museeuws

outofbreath2 wrote:

Glad to see no-ones mentioned Blissford Hill, New Forest. Doing it on Sunday and I think I'm making it worse in my head than it really is.

... and why do photos not do hills any justice...?

Blissford Hill is nothing, believe me. It's serious enough to be enjoyable, nothing more.

I lived in York for a year and did a lot of the climbs in the Moors like Rosedale Chimney. It's amazing how attuned you get to telling apart different gradients when you come to a new area like that. My experience was that anything up to 1 in 4 is vaguely sensible, but when you get to 1 in 3 it's just ridiculous. I fell off on the Chimney (going up luckily), it was so steep that when I hit the ground I just carried on going downwards! I distinctly remember seeing a '1 in 6' sign on one vicious ride in the Moors and thinking 'Oh good, an easy one', and I swear at one point on that ride the pain was so bad it actually went off the end of the scale and became pleasure. Happy days.

I reckon Hardknott Pass in the Lakes has a bit of 1 in 3 as well?

Anonymous

Steepest bit of road hill I ride is the route from Dorking up Leith Hill and through Coldharbour.

If anyone knows of a steeper road hill in the Surrey Downs I'd like to know so I can try it.

ademort

mroli wrote:

ademort wrote:

Topics like this make me sick we dont have any hills. I dont even have a kerb :oops:
Ademort

Don't expect us to cry for you - you've got canal sides. They're steep (especially if you fall in a canal). And you've got TdF havoc causing roads too!

Tell you what we do, you can have one of our canals and you give me one of your hills Oh and by the way we cannot cycle on the tdf roads, we have to use the adjacent cycle path.
Ademort

gbs

RichardSwt wrote:

Steepest bit of road hill I ride is the route from Dorking up Leith Hill and through Coldharbour.

If anyone knows of a steeper road hill in the Surrey Downs I'd like to know so I can try it.

Oh you have had a sheltered life! I am not overly experienced and have not done all of these but the following are local classics - Crocknorth Road approaching Ranmore Common from the NW, Denbies Hill approaching Ranmore from Dorking ie the SE, Chapel Lane from W Humble to Grt Bookham, Whitedown Lane from Suttton Abinger towards Effingham, Winterfold Hill from Cranleigh to Peaslake etc. Try using an OS map - there are others within easy reach of Dorking. Good luck

freehub

Rosedale Chimney or http://www.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&ll ... 9,,0,16.22

This hill IS as hard as Rosedale Chimney, and it can be harder if you've never being up it before.

redddraggon

freehub wrote:

This hill IS as hard as Rosedale Chimney, and it can be harder if you've never being up it before.

Dead Easy

stratcat

This ones fun
hill
and of course the infamous telephone box!
very hardknott

Bunneh

Something oddly alluring about a big feck off hill. Most around here are a bit crap if I'm honest, there's The Rake but it's very short, albeit quite steep. We have plenty of them but none really long and hard (fnar).

e999sam

I'm sure the Riber sign used to say 1in4 it's certainly steeper than 1in5 on the first bend and the surface was terrible the last time I went down it in earlier this year. I don't think I've been up Riber for over 20 years.

Anonymous

gbs wrote:

RichardSwt wrote:

Steepest bit of road hill I ride is the route from Dorking up Leith Hill and through Coldharbour.

If anyone knows of a steeper road hill in the Surrey Downs I'd like to know so I can try it.

Oh you have had a sheltered life! I am not overly experienced and have not done all of these but the following are local classics - Crocknorth Road approaching Ranmore Common from the NW, Denbies Hill approaching Ranmore from Dorking ie the SE, Chapel Lane from W Humble to Grt Bookham, Whitedown Lane from Suttton Abinger towards Effingham, Winterfold Hill from Cranleigh to Peaslake etc. Try using an OS map - there are others within easy reach of Dorking. Good luck

Nice, thanks

Think I'll go out at the weekend and have a look.

andy162

Rosedale is mega steep. Hywell Davies ( Planet X triathelete) can get up it on 53/25 tho!
He's a mate of Wayne "'ard as fook" Randle so that probably explains it.

I went over Rosedale last weekend. I've been over it plenty of times over the years. It never gets any easier. On blunt Winter legs or in the Summer when I'm usually going alright it always hurts...lots.

Buckled_Rims

andy162 wrote:

Rosedale is mega steep. Hywell Davies ( Planet X triathelete) can get up it on 53/25 tho!

Tell him he's cross chaining

shockedsoshocked

andy162 wrote:

Rosedale is mega steep. Hywell Davies ( Planet X triathelete) can get up it on 53/25 tho!
He's a mate of Wayne "'ard as fook" Randle so that probably explains it.

I dread to think what Wayne gets up it on! Probably about 53/16.

andy162

ShockedSoShocked wrote:

andy162 wrote:

Rosedale is mega steep. Hywell Davies ( Planet X triathelete) can get up it on 53/25 tho!
He's a mate of Wayne "'ard as fook" Randle so that probably explains it.

I dread to think what Wayne gets up it on! Probably about 53/16.

I think Davies was the only one of the Planet X crew that got up Rosedale on the 53. Earned him £100 PX for his effort. Probably needed it afterwards to repace his stretched chain & bent crank arms!