Category: Cycling

Well, in cycling, everesting is defined as “Pick any hill, anywhere in the world and complete repeats of it in a single activity until you climb 8,848m – the equivalent height of Mt Everest.”

the official way sounds hard, and a bit dull. So, I chose to Everest over a week and on multiple different hills. As in 7 daily random rides with cafe stops.

It still wasn’t easy since one ride was a boggy mtb ride, 5 days brought a nice soaking plus we had our 20-30 mph winds from the west. Thankfully I had mudguards and debatably appropriate gear for the Dales winter.

The altitude racked up fairly consistently 4-5000 feet per day however, more persistent rain on day 6 had me panicking a bit. In the end I rode 25 low viz rainy miles in gale force winds to grab 3500 feet.

Totals 31200 feet, 306 miles, 7 days..

After the usual Dales days of wind, mud and rain, possibly the freezing temps aren’t so bad.

The skies turn blue, the ground becomes firm and I’m sure the icy wind is good for the complexion.

Of course, the Dales landscape becomes blue, white and icy bottle black.

A work in progress til I get this figured out..

It takes a ripping tailwind and cunning drafting for KOMs to come my way. Fortunately, strava sent ‘local legend’ to the rescue. Now I just need to ride the same routes every day for 3 months to get the local legend laurel wreath. With Settle Nipple well and truly in the bag, it would have been nice to grab badger butt lane however, I’m satisfied with 8 pages of legend.

I’m adding a page here of course since I’m away from the UK and getting daily ‘There it goes….’ emails from Strava.

In a few more weeks, all the glory will have switched to the new legend. I suppose I can take comfort that these most beautiful cycling roads are now etched in my mind.