Martin Malins writes…
For the third time, we were blessed with dry weather again, but very cold SE wind and lots of skog on some roads. For the unititiated, this ride consists of a 50km loop around Sevenoaks taking in every stonking hill they could find. It then reverses after lunch so you get the pleasure of whizzing down what you have to ride back up later and vice versa.
Each year the clockwise/anticlockwise circuits swap over as to which is first. You can also just do one 50km circuit as Ben did as his permit was about to expire shortly after lunch. I preferred this year’s event in that all the very silly hills were in the first half (big grind up towards Exedown Hill just after the start, One Tree Hill, Yorkshill) and the ones we had to climb on the way back were all managed without recourse to the triple.
Even the controllers who sit drinking beer and marking cards at the bottom of One Tree Hill were in thermals;
I let them off as we didn’t have to do the same hill just after leaving them this year; the other way round could be a case for the Strasbourg court of human rights! (but Rob did remind me that I was at liberty to go and buy a pint!).
