Haydon Hundred Sportive 2015

June 6th 2015

63 mile ride from Hexham

An incredibly windy sportive. And I mean, winds of 40 mph with 60 mph gusts, in which it is challenging to stay on the bike and road. Throw in the highest surfaced road in England, 17 cattle grids, pineapple flapjack, 7000 ft of climbing and some torrential rain and you've got an invigorating (but rewarding) ride. In the words of my cycling buddy for the day:

"The event is a locally-organised sportive. I was vaguely familiar with the general area, and was keen to do it when it was suggested: from what I knew of the area, it promised to be a ride that would be both challenging and scenic. In neither respect did it disappoint!

Arriving at the later-than-planned time of 8.30 (my fault, due to not preparing my bike the night before/not waking up early enough), we were faced with decidedly blustery conditions. Indeed, with weather warnings from the event organisers, and the Met Office forecasting gusts of up to 65 mph, the conditions were going to make an already challenging ride even harder. At 100 km, the distance sounds very manageable, but with well over 2000 m of climbing it’s harder than it first sounds (there’s also a 140 km route option, and a 60 km one).

The ride started (after a slice of flapjack - the event organisers get bonus points for providing snacks at the start!) with a gently rolling climb through the wooded valleys, which was pleasant, though we could already feel the gusts buffeting us. We started the first proper climb of the day, and by the time we’d reached the top, the wind strength had gone from ‘quite irritating’ to ‘comically strong’ - we passed a few other riders on the climb, and everyone was fighting just to keep themselves upright and pointing in the right direction. Fortunately it was dry and quite warm, despite the wind. After a couple of miles of a strong crosswind, we turned almost directly into it for a long, fairly steep descent which took us off the ridgeline and back into more wooded country - which provided a welcome relief from the wind. The open, rolling lanes continued almost up until the first food stop, apart from the last mile or so along a busier road. We passed, and were passed by, almost as many cyclists on this stretch as on the rest of the route up till that point; I find that seems to happen on almost all sportives, which is odd: obviously it makes sense that you’d see more riders *at* the stop, but why do you tend to see more people some way before the stop?

A spell of drizzle with a couple of heavy showers followed the stop, but feeling fortified by further flapjack we powered on. The route traverses a range of scenery, with views of tranquil wooded valleys alongside small streams to the open vistas from the top of the Whin Sill as the route crosses the line of the Wall. The northern sections provided the quietest sections in terms of traffic, but also the most exposed, with little in the way of trees or other windbreaks. That said, there was very little traffic the whole way round; apart from the short stretch before the first food point, the worst section for traffic was the few miles coming out of Alston, this time on the approach to the second food point; this followed the worst-surfaced stretch of road too, which was the cobbled street in Alston itself.

Unfortunately (though understandably for the proximity to facilities), the second food point was positioned right at the bottom of what was, I think, the biggest climb on the route. This took us to one of the highest roads in England, where the wind could whistle in unimpeded from, well, wherever it was it came from. It’s impossible to convey in words how windy it was: when it hit us from the side, as it did for most of the highest ridge, it was nigh impossible to keep the bike pointing in a straight line; it felt at times as if I was leaning at 45 degrees into the wind, just to stay on two wheels.

A long descent from the ridge took us back towards the Tyne valley; this was a lovely long piece of road to cycle down, with wide sweeping curves that could be taken at high speed and sharper corners that needed hard braking to make the most of them. Had the wind not been so fierce, I would probably have pedalled hard down the straights; as it was, I was content to let gravity do most of the work, and even so I reached nearly 50 mph. Once back down to a low level, the ’sheltered’ roads back still felt very windy, though nothing like gales on the heights. The sun was out, and the final few miles made for a pleasant end to a pleasant - but tiring! - event. Back at the finishing point, we rounded off the event with sandwiches and biscuits courtesy of the event fee, not forgetting the packet of jelly babies.

All round, the route, the food and the organisation made for an excellent event, and one that I will definitely aim to do again. The fact that it’s run for the benefit of the library and the local community, and for a reasonable entry fee, adds to the appeal, though even without that factor it would be worthwhile from the point of view of the event alone."