Martin Malins writes…
A bit of an oddity this, a hilly 100 in the midst of silly n hundred km
distances in June. But 1.5AAA and a stone’s 42 mile throw from my house
so I entered it at the start of the year.
The weather was, well it’s the day of the L2B so say no more. I met one
of the first L2B riders going over the half way roundabout at 0730 on
the way down to Midhurst.
The car park at Midhurst was in full El Supremo mode complete with a
non riding Richard Phipps clone and parasols. Several scrawny looking
AAA points chasers, I was in for a caning. Also there were my Mid
Sussex Hilly champion from last (and every) year and his nemesis (who
was actually faster but didn’t do his Brevet card controls so was
strictly a DNF) who was also non-entered today and as El Supremo is
immovable on “on the line” entries he just skulked around the car
park waiting to follow someone.
At 0900 we all took off and within 12km were climbing the South Downs
via “the North face of Harting” which wasn’t too bad but a bit
gratuitous for so early in the day. The route sheet advised leaving it
in the small ring which was wise as just after we descended all the way
back down we were straight back up the B road. It got a bit more
civilised after that; Dave had given each climb an H rating and they
were all 1 H until the HHHH of Singleton. I knew this hill; it was on
my last ever open TT 5 years ago ; but it was still hard to smile for
photographer Chris Beynon.
Along the glorious Goodwood terrain and back
down before climbing over the SDW at Cocking and descending back to
Midhurst and Food and Drink; that was the easy half over.
The second half went up to Haslemere and out of the county; I also
vaguely knew this bit as I went on a club run with Charlotteville there
last year. The H’s started to multiply, and before long he had dug up a
HHHHH back up to the A3. This made me wonder why I had not brought my
triple chainset bike, but it was short and sharp. A lovely benign climb
up Blackdown was followed by a plunge down, and then a malignant climb
back up (and here he used the secret control weapon, although this was
accompanied by gallons of free squash). And soon there was just Bexley
Hill to climb (HHH HHHHH). Unfortunately this hill had become the
A272 for the day owing to emergency repairs on the main road.
As I
crested the HHH section I met a Scenic reversing back down at 0.005
mph; but just enough room to squeeze past which probably got me a good
Daily Mailing. The final horrific HHHHH section was followed by a white
knuckle descent as the A272’s normal caravan / WVM complement came
hairing up the other way with cm’s to spare.
Finally arrived back in 1
minute under 5 hrs, 4th back, well impressed 😉
Dave “El Supremo” Hudson certainly knows how to put a ride together.
