Thwaites Brow – Simon Warren #140
- SW Rating: 9/10
- Wheelygood Rating: Hard
- Length: 0.75 miles
- Avg. gradient: 10%
- Category: 4
- Strava Segment: https://www.strava.com/segments/16336129
- Route: https://www.plotaroute.com/route/1046988
- Parking: You can park around the bottom of the climb, but it’s not the best of areas, so please be careful.
At the South East corner of Keighley lurks one of those classic urban South Yorkshire climbs: steep and cobbled to within an inch of its life.
This particular one has something of an unwelcoming feel to it: the road to get to the bottom of it are busy and unforgiving and you have to turn past what looks like a semi-derelict industrial estate before you even catch sight of the bottom of the climb.
Assuming you don’t get run over by the traffic (my experience is that the drivers in these parts aren’t the most forgiving), you’ll wind your way around a couple of bends to be faced with the cobbles rearing up in front of you.
Here we go.
As soon as you hit the cobbles the whole experience changes: you go from an urban wilderness straight into green countryside with nothing in between. There are a couple of residences along both sides of the road, but they peter out very quickly, which is just as well if they all had dogs as vociferous as one I did pass. Your main issue, however, is not of the canine variety: it is the cobbles. They’re a special kind here: a bit bigger, less worn and with bigger gaps between them than a lot of the other climbs. It makes for slow, difficult, progress and is why Simon Warren rates this climb as 9/10. I can’t say I’d disagree!
Up, and up, it winds. The bottom section is comprised of hairpins: all are over 15%, one is over 20% and none of which are nice. As the traffic was sparse, I spent most of the climb looking for the smoothest line and moving about the road as needed, but if you don’t have this luxury, my advice would be to look ahead, stay seated, keep the power on, grip the bars as lightly as you dare and let the bike Find Its Own Way whilst guiding it gently in roughly the direction you want to go. The more you struggle and fight with it, the more likely you are to grind to a halt and have to put your foot down. There is the odd piece of tarmac – cherish it while it lasts, because it’ll not be long before you’re back onto the rough stuff. It is amazing how much harder the cobbles are to ride on – they just take away any momentum you might have tried to build up so there’s no respite anywhere…
Following the initial twisties, the road will straighten up somewhat and the cobbles become a bit more friendly. Yes, they’ll still rob you of your momentum if you give them half a chance, but they are smaller, smoother and better fitted together. It’s also less steep, even ducking under double digits for a time. It’s an altogether nicer experience that the lower slopes1 and you’ll begin to feel like you’re getting somewhere. Don’t get complacent – this lasts exactly as far as the left hander you can see in the distance. When you reach here, the gradient ramps back up to over 15% and the road quality degrades again2.
Did I mention that you’re about half way up?
As if it knows how you’re feeling, the road gives you that most beautiful of gifts: the false flat. 6% false. Hey – it’s better than nowt, which is what you would have got on Asterton Bank!3
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!
Up she goes with a bouncy bouncy along the way. This time it’s not quite so severe, topping out, as it does, at a ‘mere’ 17%, but the cobbles aren’t quite as bad as before4 so it’s that little bit easier to maintain that forward motion, until…
…you reach the tarmac. Yes, that’s the last of the cobbles on this one. The gradient doesn’t relent, yet, though, as that would be too easy. Give it another 75m, though, and the end is, sort of, in sight. You’ll hit another false flat (a puny 2% false, this time) before the final pull to the actual summit in amongst the housing estates.
This last pull is in two parts: the steep ramp which you can see in front of you that goes up to 17% followed by a, very final, drag of a few percent up to the junction at the summit. Oddly, the steep ramp doesn’t feel that bad, although this might simply be my legs not really reporting much of anything by that stage!
Now that you’ve crested this brute of a hill, find yourself a quiet spot, get your breath back and give yourself some real self-congratulation…
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…
Nicer experience than the lower slopes…oh, never mind…I’ll be over here…on instruments… ↩
There is something of a correlation between the curvature of the road and the roughness of the cobbles. There’s possible causation too – when vehicles steer, their wheels/tyres scrub against the road surface and it’s possible that the this causes the cobbles to become dislodged from their original starting positions and, thus roughens up the road, but this is very much just a hypothesis… ↩
Which, unsurprisingly, is why it gets a 10/10 rating… ↩
In fairness, it’d take a lot for them to be worse… ↩
