Track Changes

You approach Winnat’s Pass from the east. The direction of travel makes a small amount of difference. Getting up 206 meters in just 1.9km is a challenging feat, regardless of the direction of travel.

Alex and I drift through Castleton just before nine on a Sunday morning. It’s an hour since we ate an all-you-can-eat buffet at the Castleton Youth Hostel, and I can still feel the eggs and bacon swirling around in my stomach.

Still, it’s better than the day before, when we’d arrived in Matlock, eaten a plate of scrambled eggs and then 15 minutes later tried to climb the Sand Hill Road out of town. Sand Hill Road, where the 20% ramps left us breathless. And the taste of eggs coming back up quickly in our throats.

Still, I know how cold my legs are and how low my heart rate is as we circle through Castleton. I need to get my heart rate up, so I do mini-sprints along the high street.

It doesn’t help; the cattle grid, which indicates the start of the Winnat’s pass climb, comes quicker than I’d like it to. At this stage of the rise, the gradient is at 7%, but I can see cyclists barely cranking round in their smallest chain up ahead.

The road is thin, scarcely wide enough for two cars to pass each other, and the smell of burned clutch is strong as cars rev up to pass the cyclists, barely going two or three miles an hour up the hill.

Alex is a whippet, and he streams ahead of me. I feel the extra kilos I carry on my steel-frame bike as I crank up the hill, the gradients already kicking up to 11%.

Ahead though, is the true horror, a 400-metre section where the slope goes from 14% to 18%. I can’t go on. I have to get off the bike and push the steep gradient, a workout for my calves even as I push the bike. Cars shudder past. Alex is way up ahead, the motivation to finish the hill too strong for him to resist.

Later on, we stop in a coffee shop in Hope for a flat white and some cake. A local cyclist asks where we’ve come from.

“We did Winnat’s Pass this morning,” I say.
“I don’t even go that route, it’s no fun,” he says. “But good for you, I wouldn’t bother, there’s a nicer route up the other side.”