Ripponden Bank – Simon Warren Cycling Climbs of Yorkshire
- SW Rating: 5/10
- Wheelygood Rating: Medium
- Length: 0.93 miles
- Avg. gradient: 8%
- Category: 4
- Strava Segment: https://www.strava.com/segments/19507972
- Parking: I suspect you’d get away with parking on the side of the road somewhere for this one, although I’d avoid the A58!
Nestling on an anonymous B-road just off the A58 at Ripponden, this is one of Yorkshire’s more forgiving climbs. As soon as you turn off the main road, you can see the bottom section laid out before you, but it’s not really the main thing on your mind: that main thing is the pretty decent descent to the bridge at the bottom which marks the beginning of the actual ascent. Make the mosst of it!
The bottom section of the climb is the steepest and you’ll be pushing over 10% right from the bottom to the left-hander that you can see ahead of you. Essentially, it’s a straight slog up the side of the hill to get to that point, most of which is in the 11-13% range. Find a low gear, dodge the patchy road surface and find a nice, steady, pace at which you can turn the pedals over. The effort will begin to tell by the time you find yourself at that aforementioned bend, although this might also be due to the climb ramping up into the 17% range for a short period. It’s like the storm before the calm…
Make your way around the curve and the slope lessens quite significantly into 4-8% and it’s more than enough for you to get your breath back. The gradient you’ll see on the video doesn’t always show this, because it was windy and this seems to interfere with the operation of the barometric altimeter in my Garmin so you’ll need to take my word for it.
You can also take my word for it that it ramps back up again a couple of hundred metres further on, spiking just under 15% before relenting back into that 8-10% region. Just keep on winching and you’ll get there – other than a couple of brief ramps in the mid-teens, the slope doesn’t really have any nasty surprises from this point on as the road winds up the hillside, but, then again, it doesn’t really have any really easy bits, either. It’s like a short version of a European climb which pitches its gradient out at the bottom (as it were) and then stays there for the next n kilometres.
Eventually, you’ll gently bear left and catch sight of the summit. If you’ve made it to this point, then the last hundred metres, or so, won’t be any kind of problem. Sadly, the summit isn’t the end of the Simon Warren Strava segment, so you’ll need to keep on pedalling for another few hundred metres to make sure you get that. The video, believe it, or not, finishes early, even though the road is now pitching downhill: the segment end is a little bit further on, so, assuming your climb only happened if it’s on Strava, you might want to make double sure of the end point!
Good effort – it’s not the easiest of climbs and is still a challenge to get to the top!
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…
