It Takes a Village

The first ever "village" hill climb with Half & Half in Sedbergh was an absolute banger. Superb Spring evening. Stabby hill. Splendid crowd of humans. Silly prizes. Special.

It's always a little bit of a lottery when you try and organise something that's new, free and in a relatively remote location - will enough people come along? will too many people come along? Will the people that come along all be looking for the same sort of adventure?

But perhaps by serendipity or perhaps by good guesswork, we'd say that we hit the jackpot with "Half & Hilf". 34 riders, all different ages, sizes, outlooks and expectations came together for a splendid evening in the Yorkshire Dales. Here's a bit of a photo diary of the evening we had together.

---

What's a "village" hill climb, we hear you ask?

Well the basic premise for the evening was that it would be free, open to all and that it was not a race (it was a race, but only really against yourself, and everyone else). Folks would be awarded prizes for all sorts of things (no bar tape for weight saving purposes = being mocked and probably getting a prize!) so it didn't matter what bike or ability you had with you!

The plan: we'd meet at the Bar in Sedbergh, roll out in nice big groups and spin 12km up the valley to the foot of the climb, smash up it at your own pace (the advantage of using Strava for timing - go whenever you like!), gather at the top, ring some cowbells and then flow back down the long descending valley to the bar for a few beverages, some pizzas and PRIZES!

In the immortal words of John "Hannibal" Smith, "love it when a plan comes together", This could not have gone more according to plan if we'd tried.

But which climb?

We were using the particularly stabby (and arguably harder) side of the Coal Road from Garsdale Head - number 73 in Simon Warren's 100 Greatest Climbs books.

The headlines are that it's stabby from the very start and that it has THREE false summits. Hateful.

---

Here's our gallery of the evening's event... and what a gorgeous evening it was:

A huge thanks to the lovely folks at Fell Brewery for helping with prizes and promotion. Thanks to John and Hannah for giving us the use of Half & Half and entertaining such a silly idea. Thanks to Simon Warren for driving all the way from Sheffield to ride and for donating some lovely prizes too. Thanks to everyone that came and thanks to the Yorkshire Dales for just being amazing. Every time.

Oh yeah... and the Leaderboard...