The Hill that Won
And so, to Bath. “Who could ever be tired of Bath?” A Blue Peter annual I have features Valerie Singleton (yes, I am that old) telling readers that Jane Austen said that in 1801, around the time the Royal Crescent, the Circus and all the other Georgian bits went up. Up, up, up. Bath and the surrounding countryside has a lot of up.
Left alone for a morning while my wife walked Bath with a bunch of Japanese translators and while most of Ratae were doing the Reliability Ride I jumped aboard my road bike at the Youth Hostel to see where it would take me. And the short answer is… ‘up.’
Starting with Bathwick Hill, mercifully halfway up already, I headed for cycle track along a disused railway. I was supposed to be going through the Monkton Combe tunnel which Sustrans tells us has music and everything but joined the route too late, so I only experienced the open air section of the tunnel, which is really no tunnel at all. And I had to sing my own songs. When the tunnel ran out at a pony trekking centre a helpful lady told me I should turn right, not left, out of the car park because I didn’t want to go up that hill. I smiled weakly, already aware that the arrows on my Garmin were pointing ominously left and changed to my small chainring to tackle Wellow to Hinton Charterhouse. There was about a mile and a half of it and it was very, very steep. Halfway up a chap mending a gate called out “Good effort” before adjusting his crampons. At that point I was seriously doubting whether I would make it back to the Youth Hostel (where I’d got special permission to sneak back in for a post check out shower) by 12.00 as promised. By the top I was wondering if I’d make it back at all.
The route levelled out though and was generally faster as I headed for Norton St Phillip and Trowbridge before doubling back for Bradford on Avon so I could pedal over the iconic Avoncliffe Aqueduct. No music there either. To remind me just how hilly the area is, and how much of a cautious cyclist I am, I was twice forced (no, really, it was that steep) to walk down hills, into Avoncliffe itself the second time. That really should have told me that something nasty was looming. We know that what goes up must come down. Little attention is paid to the fact that the reverse is inevitably also true. But there was a canal tow path stretch after the aqueduct, which left me just a couple of miles from the end of the ride. How bad could the last hill really be?
I left the canal, crossed the main road and there it was. The hill glowered, lowered its horns towards me and pawed the ground with its right hoof (isn’t that ‘hoofing’ the ground? Don’t write in). A pretty Senorita reached out from the front row of the stands and handed me the flower from her hair. “Que Tenga Suerte, Senor Matador!” she wished me (again, don’t write in if you speak Spanish). Luck? I’d need more than that to defeat Brassknocker Hill.
I thrust out my chest, swished my cape and began. Brassknocker made its first charge. I flourished my cape and stepped neatly aside. “Ooh!” went the crowd and I winked at the Senorita. On the first corner Brassknocker rallied, and I had to step the other way to let it rush past me from behind. “Aah!” went the crowd and the Senorita laughed and clapped. The next bend was harder. As I stepped aside, I could feel warm, wet bovine breath as Brassknocker snorted. A ripple of uncertainty went through the stands and I couldn’t quite see the Senorita.
Then I was in trouble. Brassknocker made me stop, unclip and dismount with just over half of him left. Had I left it any longer I would have stopped unintentionally, probably with no energy left to unclip, and fallen in front of a pursuing SUV. The crowd groaned. I had a vision of the Senorita, face showing sadness and disappointment in equal measure. I looked down to where I had pinned her flower to my jersey: it was gone, and the vision of her vanished too.
Having walked the rest of the way up Brassknocker Hill I made it back to the Youth Hostel for 12.20. They kindly let me have my shower.
An hour later, driving back to flatter Leicestershire I realised that if not tired of, I had certainly been tired by, Bath. I think I’ll do the Reliability Ride next year.
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