I learned with excitement yesterday that Bamford Clough – a hitherto obscure, steep, rough, unsurfaced byway taking to the skies from the village of Bamford in the Hope Valley – was tarmacked a few days ago, and is now a genuine road.
A road with a signed gradient of 35%, no less, which makes it a possible new holder of the title of Britain’s steepest signed cyclable road uphill. (Ffordd Pen Llech in Harlech is signed 40% but you can’t ride up: it’s one-way down.)
It was, conveniently, only a mile from Mark’s house in Hathersage, so we nipped out after breakfast for a look. We did try to cycle up the fresh, blackberry-jam-coloured asphalt, but the slippery autumn leaves and severe gradient made that comically impossible.
That was quite enough excitement for one trip, and I got a lunchtime train back home to recover.
