S
Simon Brooke
Guest
There was a thread on this group not so very long ago asking which was
the longest continuous climb in Britain, and the answer turned out to
up Mannock Water to Wanlockhead and thence up to the radio mast on the
Green Lowther. We did not do that climb today...
Sometime last week Big Dougie phoned up and asked if I fancied a ride up
to Wanlockhead, saying he and Andrew were planning to do the run today,
both being off work. I swithered. I did want to do the run. I thought
it would be a good test of both me and the bike. But I also seriously
doubted whether I was fit for it. Eventually at yesterday's club run
(Dalbeattie Forest, bits of Red Route and bits of mucking around -
great fun) I committed to going. So at 9.45 this morning Dougie's van
rolled up at my front door, we loaded the Dolan in, and set of for
Andrew's house in Dumfries. At twenty past ten we rolled out from
Andrew's house, heading north. Big Dougie, the time trial animal, also
known locally as 'the bus'; Andrew, former Scottish Junior Champion;
and me, who am at best a leisure cyclist, and who had never taken part
in any organised ride before this year. Ooops.
Andrew didn't want to cycle the A76 (and small blame to him - it is
ridiculously narrow and twisty for the amount of very fast HGV traffic
it carries) so we went out by back roads through mostly rolling
countryside via Terregles and Dunscore. On the flat I was keeping up
fine but on the climbs - as I has expected - I could not keep up. That
was OK partly because Dougie and Andrew were good about waiting for me
at the tops but also because I was descending faster than they were.
Even when we were all free wheeling the Dolan seemed to pull ahead,
which is a credit to Mavic hubs; but on steeper descents I was also
braking less. At Keir Mill we stopped to pay homage at the forge where
Kirkpatrick Macmillan built the first pedal powered bicycle. This
section was also notable for wonderful autumn colours. We saw two red
squirrels and interrupted a middle sized raptor (not a buzzard or a
kite and definitely not an eagle; possibly a harrier) stooping on a
pheasant.
Past Penpont we hit some fairly noticeable climbs and I was beginning to
think I couldn't do it, and ought to peel off to give the other two a
chance. And then quite suddenly my legs started to work; and for
several miles of (admittedly fairly gentle) climb I was leading the
group at a steady 18mph. Then down a tearing descent, across the river,
and up onto the A76. Apart from one wazzock in a gold Citroen Saxo the
traffic wasn't a problem, and very soon we came to the right turn over
the railway and up onto the Mennock Pass.
Well, I had been expecting it to be tough. And sections of it were
tough; but not actually that tough. Certainly there were quite long
sections where I was down to six miles per hour, gown in my 39x26
lowest gear; certainly there were corners I went round dreading I might
find it steeper the other side; and certainly Dougie and Andrew were
climbing faster than I was. But the Mennock is a sort of stepped
ascent, with quite short severe bits interspersed with much longer,
much less severe bits on which I was quickly up to 18mph again - which
is a high speed for me, and when Wanlockhead came over the ridge I was
surprised and almost indignant. It wasn't supposed to be so easy. It
ought to have been further. It should have been harder.
I broke the speed limit coming into Wanlockhead and quickly caught up
with Dougie and Andrew. Through the village and right onto the road to
Leadhills, which quickly led us up to the Lanarkshire border, where we
stopped briefly for pictures and I put my buff on. It was decidedly
cold up there. We looked up at the radio mast which marked the real top
of the climb; it didn't look far and it didn't look _that_ much higher
(although it is in fact another 250 metres). But none of us felt it was
our day to go up there.
There was a time when you went over the border from Dumfrieshire into
Lanarkshire and the roads got worse; not any more. The road through
Leadhills to Elvanfoot, though a curious red colour, was extremely well
made for a little used high mountain road. The scenery was amazing in a
completely different way - a lunar sub-arctic tundra littered with the
spoil and wreckage of four thousand years of mining, very wild, rugged
and bleak. We passed through it surprisingly quickly; past Leadhills,
although the descents weren't steep, we were holding 40mph for
considerable distances. Somewhere in this section my seat wedge bag
fell off, nearly taking out Andrew... Ooops oooops!
At Elvanfoot, with the M74 in sight, the question was whether to go down
the Dalveen Pass or go through under the motorway to Greenhill Stairs
and down by the Devil's Beeftub. I voted for Dalveen, and the others
agreed. And as we turned right towards Dalveen, the reason for the last
section being so fast and so easy came quickly apparent. We had a wind.
Not a wind of the sort Jon and I encountered on our Journey to the
Bottom of the Sea, but sapping nonetheless and remarkably cold. Once
again I was not able to stay with the others and dropped back. The
first time they stopped for me to catch up Andrew commented that the
sooner we got down out of the wind the better, and I uttered the
immortal words 'it's not far now'. The second time they stopped for me
to catch up (when I put on the windproof fleece gilet Juliette made for
me) he was asking me were we nearly there yet?
And thus to the top of Dalveen, where the road rolls over and plunges
200 metres down across the face of the hill in under three miles, down
to a valley floor so deep it never sees the sun. I had been looking
forward to it, building up to it. This had been, in my mind, the high
point of the trip. I tucked. I spun. I put everything I had in to it,
everything I know about making a bike go fast, and at the first steeply
downhill corner I had just managed to get the bike up to 20 mph. Dougie
powered past with his steam engine pile driver rhythm, pumping down the
hill at least two or three miles an hour faster than I could achieve.
For the first time in the day I couldn't stay with him on a descent. I
burned my legs trying to get a little more, and as the altitude reeled
down and the wind grew less somehow managed to find 26 mph. And then
Andrew went past in a ridiculously low tuck, his legs practically
blurring.
I felt, frankly, gutted. I'd also badly burned my legs. I eased up, dug
out a hanky, blew my nose, and settled down to the sort of 17mph I
could sustain. There really wasn't any point in doing anything else.
Once off the hill and into the bottom of the valley I settled down into
a comfortable 18-19 and quickly came up with the others. As we rode
down through Durrisdeer Andrew was listening to the remarkable rattling
that the Dolan has made since I assembled it, and which was now
noticeably worse. Once I'd said I was confident it was transmission
related and demonstrated it went away when I free wheeled he was
quickly able to diagnose an insufficiently tight cassette.
And thus back down to the A76. The plan there had been to cross and go
back over Keir and thus by the back roads down to Dumfries but Dougie
and Andrew were concerned that I was running out of legs (which was
pretty much true). I was confident that I could make it back to
Dumfries along the A76, which is mostly fairly flat and overall
slightly downhill, without difficulty, at probably about 10mph, which
seeing it was only sixteen miles would see me into Dumfries before
dark.
So I suggested to them that they go on and I'd meet them back at
Andrew's. They both rejected this solution and agreed to accompany me
back along the A76 (a road which, as I've said earlier, Andrew very
reasonably dislikes). Once we were on a clear open section of the road
they started teaching me to chaingang, something I hadn't done before,
and soon I was pedalling along concentrating so hard on Dougie's red
rear tyre that I was really unaware of artics hurtling by my elbow,
while Andrew followed behind as tail-gunner. After we'd been doing this
for a while I gained sufficient confidence to glance down at my
speedometer... to see 24 mph. I was staggered. I had been really
struggling for legs and twenty-four miles an hour is a speed I simply
cannot sustain for any length of time. And yet here we were, sustaining
it, on an undulating road, for mile after mile. Admittedly I sometimes
couldn't hold Dougie's wheel, particularly on slight rises - he has an
amazing ability to hold the same speed almost irrespective of gradient;
but once up the rise I would get back on the back of the bus, and we'd
go hurtling on.
It couldn't last though - I was out of water and getting low on energy.
Eventually in at Closeburn I pulled up, and bought a bottle of coke and
had my water bottle refilled by a very pretty and cheerful lass in a
little shop. And then on for three of four more miles to Amisfield,
where we turned off onto back roads and slowed down. I was still
managing 17mph on the flat section, but on every least rise my speed
was down to ten or twelve while the others accelerated up trying to
outsprint each other.
And thus back into Dumfries just at rush hour. I've always been an
'assertive' rider in urban traffic, but probably due to sheer tiredness
I was having trouble unclipping my pedals, so I negotiated the
roundabouts and traffic lights using techniques learned in days before
clipless pedals - engage low gear, coast up until you can see a gap
developing, sprint like buggery and be quite prepared to just
intimidate motorists out of the way. At the roundabout where we crossed
the ringroad there is apparently now a cyclists underpass but I didn't
know about this and I wasn't going to risk trying to unclip in heavy
traffic so I just muscled through...
And thus back to Andrew's and some most welcome cake and tea, and a fair
bit of mutual joshing. Distance 77.9 miles, average speed 13.6mph, time
rolling 5 hours 43 minutes, and seeing we scarcely stopped at all,
elapsed time under six hours. The climb up the Mennock alone was 360
metres vertical; total climb on the whole trip cannot have been less
than 500. And, apart from the headwind on the top, the weather was fine
- excellent in the morning, not bad in the afternoon, and despite
forecast rain, apart from a few drops of rain south of Elvanfoot, dry.
A most excellent day.
--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
'You cannot put "The Internet" into the Recycle Bin.'
the longest continuous climb in Britain, and the answer turned out to
up Mannock Water to Wanlockhead and thence up to the radio mast on the
Green Lowther. We did not do that climb today...
Sometime last week Big Dougie phoned up and asked if I fancied a ride up
to Wanlockhead, saying he and Andrew were planning to do the run today,
both being off work. I swithered. I did want to do the run. I thought
it would be a good test of both me and the bike. But I also seriously
doubted whether I was fit for it. Eventually at yesterday's club run
(Dalbeattie Forest, bits of Red Route and bits of mucking around -
great fun) I committed to going. So at 9.45 this morning Dougie's van
rolled up at my front door, we loaded the Dolan in, and set of for
Andrew's house in Dumfries. At twenty past ten we rolled out from
Andrew's house, heading north. Big Dougie, the time trial animal, also
known locally as 'the bus'; Andrew, former Scottish Junior Champion;
and me, who am at best a leisure cyclist, and who had never taken part
in any organised ride before this year. Ooops.
Andrew didn't want to cycle the A76 (and small blame to him - it is
ridiculously narrow and twisty for the amount of very fast HGV traffic
it carries) so we went out by back roads through mostly rolling
countryside via Terregles and Dunscore. On the flat I was keeping up
fine but on the climbs - as I has expected - I could not keep up. That
was OK partly because Dougie and Andrew were good about waiting for me
at the tops but also because I was descending faster than they were.
Even when we were all free wheeling the Dolan seemed to pull ahead,
which is a credit to Mavic hubs; but on steeper descents I was also
braking less. At Keir Mill we stopped to pay homage at the forge where
Kirkpatrick Macmillan built the first pedal powered bicycle. This
section was also notable for wonderful autumn colours. We saw two red
squirrels and interrupted a middle sized raptor (not a buzzard or a
kite and definitely not an eagle; possibly a harrier) stooping on a
pheasant.
Past Penpont we hit some fairly noticeable climbs and I was beginning to
think I couldn't do it, and ought to peel off to give the other two a
chance. And then quite suddenly my legs started to work; and for
several miles of (admittedly fairly gentle) climb I was leading the
group at a steady 18mph. Then down a tearing descent, across the river,
and up onto the A76. Apart from one wazzock in a gold Citroen Saxo the
traffic wasn't a problem, and very soon we came to the right turn over
the railway and up onto the Mennock Pass.
Well, I had been expecting it to be tough. And sections of it were
tough; but not actually that tough. Certainly there were quite long
sections where I was down to six miles per hour, gown in my 39x26
lowest gear; certainly there were corners I went round dreading I might
find it steeper the other side; and certainly Dougie and Andrew were
climbing faster than I was. But the Mennock is a sort of stepped
ascent, with quite short severe bits interspersed with much longer,
much less severe bits on which I was quickly up to 18mph again - which
is a high speed for me, and when Wanlockhead came over the ridge I was
surprised and almost indignant. It wasn't supposed to be so easy. It
ought to have been further. It should have been harder.
I broke the speed limit coming into Wanlockhead and quickly caught up
with Dougie and Andrew. Through the village and right onto the road to
Leadhills, which quickly led us up to the Lanarkshire border, where we
stopped briefly for pictures and I put my buff on. It was decidedly
cold up there. We looked up at the radio mast which marked the real top
of the climb; it didn't look far and it didn't look _that_ much higher
(although it is in fact another 250 metres). But none of us felt it was
our day to go up there.
There was a time when you went over the border from Dumfrieshire into
Lanarkshire and the roads got worse; not any more. The road through
Leadhills to Elvanfoot, though a curious red colour, was extremely well
made for a little used high mountain road. The scenery was amazing in a
completely different way - a lunar sub-arctic tundra littered with the
spoil and wreckage of four thousand years of mining, very wild, rugged
and bleak. We passed through it surprisingly quickly; past Leadhills,
although the descents weren't steep, we were holding 40mph for
considerable distances. Somewhere in this section my seat wedge bag
fell off, nearly taking out Andrew... Ooops oooops!
At Elvanfoot, with the M74 in sight, the question was whether to go down
the Dalveen Pass or go through under the motorway to Greenhill Stairs
and down by the Devil's Beeftub. I voted for Dalveen, and the others
agreed. And as we turned right towards Dalveen, the reason for the last
section being so fast and so easy came quickly apparent. We had a wind.
Not a wind of the sort Jon and I encountered on our Journey to the
Bottom of the Sea, but sapping nonetheless and remarkably cold. Once
again I was not able to stay with the others and dropped back. The
first time they stopped for me to catch up Andrew commented that the
sooner we got down out of the wind the better, and I uttered the
immortal words 'it's not far now'. The second time they stopped for me
to catch up (when I put on the windproof fleece gilet Juliette made for
me) he was asking me were we nearly there yet?
And thus to the top of Dalveen, where the road rolls over and plunges
200 metres down across the face of the hill in under three miles, down
to a valley floor so deep it never sees the sun. I had been looking
forward to it, building up to it. This had been, in my mind, the high
point of the trip. I tucked. I spun. I put everything I had in to it,
everything I know about making a bike go fast, and at the first steeply
downhill corner I had just managed to get the bike up to 20 mph. Dougie
powered past with his steam engine pile driver rhythm, pumping down the
hill at least two or three miles an hour faster than I could achieve.
For the first time in the day I couldn't stay with him on a descent. I
burned my legs trying to get a little more, and as the altitude reeled
down and the wind grew less somehow managed to find 26 mph. And then
Andrew went past in a ridiculously low tuck, his legs practically
blurring.
I felt, frankly, gutted. I'd also badly burned my legs. I eased up, dug
out a hanky, blew my nose, and settled down to the sort of 17mph I
could sustain. There really wasn't any point in doing anything else.
Once off the hill and into the bottom of the valley I settled down into
a comfortable 18-19 and quickly came up with the others. As we rode
down through Durrisdeer Andrew was listening to the remarkable rattling
that the Dolan has made since I assembled it, and which was now
noticeably worse. Once I'd said I was confident it was transmission
related and demonstrated it went away when I free wheeled he was
quickly able to diagnose an insufficiently tight cassette.
And thus back down to the A76. The plan there had been to cross and go
back over Keir and thus by the back roads down to Dumfries but Dougie
and Andrew were concerned that I was running out of legs (which was
pretty much true). I was confident that I could make it back to
Dumfries along the A76, which is mostly fairly flat and overall
slightly downhill, without difficulty, at probably about 10mph, which
seeing it was only sixteen miles would see me into Dumfries before
dark.
So I suggested to them that they go on and I'd meet them back at
Andrew's. They both rejected this solution and agreed to accompany me
back along the A76 (a road which, as I've said earlier, Andrew very
reasonably dislikes). Once we were on a clear open section of the road
they started teaching me to chaingang, something I hadn't done before,
and soon I was pedalling along concentrating so hard on Dougie's red
rear tyre that I was really unaware of artics hurtling by my elbow,
while Andrew followed behind as tail-gunner. After we'd been doing this
for a while I gained sufficient confidence to glance down at my
speedometer... to see 24 mph. I was staggered. I had been really
struggling for legs and twenty-four miles an hour is a speed I simply
cannot sustain for any length of time. And yet here we were, sustaining
it, on an undulating road, for mile after mile. Admittedly I sometimes
couldn't hold Dougie's wheel, particularly on slight rises - he has an
amazing ability to hold the same speed almost irrespective of gradient;
but once up the rise I would get back on the back of the bus, and we'd
go hurtling on.
It couldn't last though - I was out of water and getting low on energy.
Eventually in at Closeburn I pulled up, and bought a bottle of coke and
had my water bottle refilled by a very pretty and cheerful lass in a
little shop. And then on for three of four more miles to Amisfield,
where we turned off onto back roads and slowed down. I was still
managing 17mph on the flat section, but on every least rise my speed
was down to ten or twelve while the others accelerated up trying to
outsprint each other.
And thus back into Dumfries just at rush hour. I've always been an
'assertive' rider in urban traffic, but probably due to sheer tiredness
I was having trouble unclipping my pedals, so I negotiated the
roundabouts and traffic lights using techniques learned in days before
clipless pedals - engage low gear, coast up until you can see a gap
developing, sprint like buggery and be quite prepared to just
intimidate motorists out of the way. At the roundabout where we crossed
the ringroad there is apparently now a cyclists underpass but I didn't
know about this and I wasn't going to risk trying to unclip in heavy
traffic so I just muscled through...
And thus back to Andrew's and some most welcome cake and tea, and a fair
bit of mutual joshing. Distance 77.9 miles, average speed 13.6mph, time
rolling 5 hours 43 minutes, and seeing we scarcely stopped at all,
elapsed time under six hours. The climb up the Mennock alone was 360
metres vertical; total climb on the whole trip cannot have been less
than 500. And, apart from the headwind on the top, the weather was fine
- excellent in the morning, not bad in the afternoon, and despite
forecast rain, apart from a few drops of rain south of Elvanfoot, dry.
A most excellent day.
--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
'You cannot put "The Internet" into the Recycle Bin.'
