Neville Street – Simon Warren Cycling Climbs of the North East
- SW Rating: 1/10
- Wheelygood Rating: Easy
- Length: 0.19 miles
- Avg. gradient: 7%
- Strava Segment: https://www.strava.com/segments/19602172
- Route: https://www.plotaroute.com/route/1024660
So, you’d like some experience of cobbled climbs, but Belgium is too far away and everything around Halifax is too hard (I’m looking at you Trooper Lane and Shibden Wall), then here’s a starting point. Not long and not too steep … but you are likely to have an audience so any mistakes will be laughed at.
Against this background, Dr Dave and I tried it anyway. Once I’d got away from the stares from people who were wondering why I was talking to my bike (the GoPro is a bit tricky to reach under the handlebars, but it is voice controlled), we were straight into it. It’s a simple one this … well, it is for the main event. Cobbles, laid in a straight line, directly up the side of the hill. The 7% average doesn’t quite do this justice as it includes a flat section at the top and the actual cobbles are more in the 10% region. Not easy, but not daft steep, either.
The thing I found here, much more than the steeper and nastier cobbled climbs, was that I really had to keep my head up to look where I was going: the additional speed meant is was easy for me to drift across the carriageway without really noticing. The harder climbs are such that you’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do simply to keep moving and the traffic respects that (once they’ve stopped laughing, of course!) Here, the expectation is that you’ll be fine to make it up the hill and so a bit less quarter is given. This is also true of the residents who will notice if you’re weaving about…
Once at the top of the lumpy bit you’ll need to take care as there’s a junction at which you do not have priority. Gan canny, because, again, the traffic won’t be expecting you to be there – the students don’t tend to come this way and so cyclists are somewhat rarer. Once you’ve survived the, slightly odd, junction arrangement, it’s just a pedal up the, wider and more major, road to the top taking care with the road surface and traffic calming before you can claim your prize. Pro tip: don’t try to claim said prize whilst at the traffic lights, because you’ll make precisely no friends for holding people up, especially if you’ve not noticed that it’s a one-way street and the right hand lane is for turning right…
Assuming you’ve survived (the environment is by far your largest threat) then tick this one off and move away to somewhere else whilst your luck’s in!
If there are any other road climbs you’d like me to take on, the more ridiculous the better, then please send me a message on my FaceBook page https://www.facebook.com/wheelygoodcycling/ or email me on wheelygoodmail@gmail.com and let me know…
