A few years back, inspired by the challenge of riding Mont Ventoux three times in a day to claim membership of the Club des Cinglés, I set about searching for roads in the UK where a similar challenge could be attempted. Of course there’s nothing on our island that comes remotely close to the mighty Giant of Provence but we have plenty of decent climbs and some are fortunate enough to provide three different paths to the summit. My first location for such a challenge was the Bwlch in South Wales, a ride that accumulated 1,815 metres of altitude over a gruelling 85km kilometres without a single bit of flat road over the course of its three ascents.
Now, my quest for another such location has brought me back to Wales but I’m ramping it up a bit this time, turning up the volume of the gradient and taking on the one, the only, Bwlch y Groes. The southern ascent, from Dinas Mawddwy, is revered as one of the toughest climbs in Britain, a true 10/10, featuring one of, if not the hardest stretch of continually brutal slope anywhere in the realm.
As we will discover, though, it’s not
