stapfam

The one hill on the London to Brighton ride for the British Heart Foundation.Very popular ride with around 28,500 entrants this year. On top of that there are the ones doing the ride without entering so a lot more than that doing the ride. It gets crowded and when I have edited the rest I will post a shorter clip of the "Highlights"? of the ride. This video is long but is the complete climb of the hill. I am slow but I had the right bike with the right gearing-30/30- and the right frame of mind. The hill is about 1.5 miles long with an average gradient of 10%. It is an old Coaching road and has several "Flat" bits to rest the horses for the steep bits in excess of 15% on the steeper bits. My Garmin did record a section of 22% but that may have been due to a loss of signal at one point. The only thing I can compare it to is the climb up Mt. Ventoux except it is a lot shorter.


Not a hard ride as the LtoB is only 54 miles long but I did it in 4 hours 21 minutes riding time but plenty of rest breaks due to traffic jams and stops for accidents. Speed cannot be high due to the traffic so a nice leisurely ride that I have survived once again.

billydonn

Love the practice of talking to people who are gasping for breath... Fiendish.

Note to viewers: Stapfam only weighs about 37 pounds, so a 12/30 may not be enough for the more "substantial" rider.

enjoyed the video Doug.

stapfam

Be honest and one good point about the meds I am currently on is that I can't get the heart rate up so I have to ride at a lower pace than I normally would. Doesn't use as much energy but it is slowing me down a bit.

And on the 37 lbs--add one hundred and that was my weight when I got home. I lost 5 lbs on the ride and had to regain some of that with a couple of pints of Spitfire and a Guinness. The food intake on Monday has kept the weight to 140 so like the PRO Riders- I will not suffer on the 150 mile ride today as I have regained all weight loss. That was one difficult evening trying to stay awake.

chasm54

Note for comparison. Ditchling beacon tops out at only 886' above sea level, so those who live in truly mountainous areas might regard it as a pimple. But it's a good illustration of how strenuous UK topography can get - nothing is very high, but the hilly areas are corrugated - the climbs can be very steep and they come thick and fast in places. One can gain a lot of elevation in a ride despite never getting far above sea level.

Then there is the flatlanders perspective. Despite not being very high, Ditcling Beacon is higher than the highest points in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana. Considering the area they coverthey are really very flat indeed.

Fun video. Other people's suffering/incompetence is always so entertaining...

stapfam

One thing you have to remember is that this ride is for charity and a good cause at that. Many of the riders are just commuters or fun riders so you cannot expect them to climb a hill like Ditchling. You have to admire their guts though and For those of us that can ride and not much daunts us- it seems comical to see a top of the range bike ridden by a fit young man being pushed up hills and I even saw them being pushed up slopes. But living in London you are not going to need a bike geared up for the Sussex hills. Compact crankset and possibly a 12/25 cassette is probably all you will ever need. Lower gears are definitely not needed.

Chasm has confirmed the type of hills I ride. Our group normally does a 30 to 50 miler at weekends taking in about 3,000 ft of climbing with 2,400 of that in 3 hills spread over less than 10 miles of that ride. That does take some training to achieve so for these poor city dwellers to attempt the LtoB without training is a good achievement. I just wonder for how many it will be "Never Again". Quite a few I should think till next year when they will be back.

Strava does not record altitude or Gradients accurately when working through a mobile phone so here is my Garmin readout on gradients, Ditchling is the last hill before the end but you can see how hilly parts of the ride are. The straight line at the end is where I did not switch off the computer and it just registered Home.



Still working on a Video of the ride but my better half keeps finding jobs for me to do but that will give a better representation of the ride when I get it done.

Boudicca

I regret not getting into bike-for-fun when I lived in Britain. I rode to work, I rode to school, but I never rode for fun.

Is it time to box the Friday up and take her for a bicycle tour of Britain?

Dan Burkhart 

Enjoyed watching that. I'm sure I would have been one of those walking my 3 speed.

chasm54

Absolutely. Despite our density of population, outside the South-East corner the UK is surprisingly empty (its a bit like how much of Canada's population is concentrated around the Toronto metro area, though obviously Canada is on an utterly different scale). It's not as wet as people imagine, either. Where I live on the East coast gets substantially less annual rainfall than Toronto. Unfortunately, a lot the most scenic touring areas tend to be in the west, though. LOL

Seriously, lots of good touring country. If you didn't make it to Scotland, it's right up there, scenery-wise.

qcpmsame 

I have really, really got to get to the UK for some riding and real bike culture, from the members here from the UK I doubt I would dislike anyone there. And, I think I would HAVE to learn climbing properly and correctly, not the mole hill Florida "climbing" that is here, these are rollers, not hills. Some Day Doug, some day.

Bill

stapfam

Just to give you an idea of how many bikes.

Still haven't done my edit but this is on You Tube and is about 5 miles into the ride. It will have been like this from 6.30 am right through to about midday.

woodway

I enjoyed the video, thanks for posting.

But I was initially surprised. I did not read the thread title carefully enough and I thought it was going to be a thread about old guys "ditching bacon" and I was preparing to put in my objection.

Popeyecahn

At first I thought it said "Ditching Bacon"...

Artmo 

Thanks for that, Doug. I've thought of doing the LtoB, but we are rarely over there at this time of year. We've seen the crowd arrive in B-ton - quite a party! I'm not too fond of mass rides like that and climbing Ditchling on a tandem with all those wazzocks all over the road looks a bit hairy. Good to see the English summer weather didn't disappoint
As another poster mentioned, cycling in the UK is varied and can be very challenging: no mountains, per se, but some very steep climbs and beautiful scenery. I grew up in the south west (West Country) and I'm sure that even with a 24X34 now I wouldn't be able to get up some hills that I used to enjoy climbing - but that was 55 years ago.

10 Wheels

Amazing video and that you could talk as well as pedal. Thanks for the great effort.

Rick@OCRR

That's an amazing ride! I've ridden in the U.K. a few times but have never seen that many cyclists on the road. The hills remind me of my prev. state of Missouri, lots of steep up and down but no long climbs.

Out here in California it's not unusual to be climbing constantly for several hours and quite often over 8,000 feet of elevation.

Great videos, thanks Doug!

Rick / OCRR

metalheart44

Nice video, good job on the climb.

rck

Stap-I started to watch but it was making me tired. I'll watch it after I get back from todays ride!

NOS88

The fist vidoe reminded me of the Columbia County 50, a ride in central Pennsylvania, I used to do. There was one climb up Logging Road that climbed 1200 ft. in a bit under 1.25 miles. Once past the half-way point, you'd see lots of people with the wobbles right before they got off to walk. And, as you approached the top, I'd guess almost half were walking. I walked the last quarter of it the first time I went up. I swore I'd never walk it again. And in nine additional rides I was successful. But the pain of that first year... my, oh, my.

Dan Burkhart 

So did I. My response was going to be

NEVER!