It’s a Numbers Game Innit?
Posted on Monday 22 March 2010 by Martin Hayman
Five of the 4-star hardcore joined the 09.00 train to Sevenoaks. Leaving the station in a northerly direction, we soon pick up a lively, even hectic, pace down the hill towards Riverhead. But reality bites the moment we cross the M25 and toil up the scarp of the North Downs to Knockholt. Surely one’s heart should not be thumping at so many BPM, so early in the ride?
We follow the ridge of the downs westwards along Knockholt’s undulating Main Road. This is a well-used club route and we encounter several groups coming in the other direction, including a hard-charging pack of Paragons. We cross the A233 into the unadopted Chestnut Avenue, broad, straight and tree-lined, but entirely lacking a road surface. Picking our way between the craters, we are rewarded by glimpses of the noble prospect to the south. We pop out on to the familiar B2024 Westerham Road, and pass on our left the turn down into the excruciating White Hill, parcours of the annual Bec CC hill climb.
We stay straight along the ridge, then turn into Ganger’s Hill, overarched with trees and treacherously frost-damaged. It’s a temptation to come screaming down the hill, but beware the major bump on the approach to the dog-leg! This is where our Angela nearly came unstuck on a previous 4-star ride. But it is pure pleasure to carry the speed over the M25 bridge, then immediately the A22 bridge.
We ease our speed as we pass between the parked cars of Sunday worshippers in Church End, an achingly picturesque Gothick community. At the valley’s bottom we cross over and directly tackle The Enterden, a taxing climb through the woods of Tilburstow Common. We cross back to the east of the A22 and are soon bowling southwards down the open but little-trafficked lanes towards Lingfield and our planned lunch stop at the Hare & Hounds. But we have made such good progress that we are fully half an hour early.
So we press on, looping south of the Lingfield Racecourse and through Dormansland to the Fountain Inn at Cowden, still displaying a faded tin placard with the CTC winged wheel. Here we have better luck than on a previous occasion when we arrived rather late, mob-handed, and were told we could not be catered for. This time all is well and we are seated before the rush.
Our crew, more sedate after lunch, bimbles eastwards in the lanes towards Tonbridge. Pearly grey has given way to splendid spring sunshine. There is no traffic. There are lambs are in the fields and catkins in the branches. Soon it will be summer time. Life is good. But cycling – it’s the hardest game in the world. Sevenoaks is built on a hill. None of the approaches is easy on a bike, but ours is the hardest, from Underriver. Carter’s Lane goes up One Tree Hill, and it’s a brute.
At its steepest, One Tree Hill gains about 50m altitude in about 250m, suggesting a gradient of 20%, or 1 in 5 for the old school, making all yearn for the 29 sprocket. Hearts pumping 19 to the dozen, we reassemble at the top for the final dash round the back of the Knole Park Estate into Sevenoaks, in good time for a 15.18 London train. It was a day to give us all a reality check on our fitness. However none of us had a working odometer, let alone heart monitor, so I can’t give you the numbers!
Riders: Roger and Kay, Naomi, Jon, and Martin.