Height matters. When we were children, Dad measured us with chalk on the garage wall each birthday. Tall was good. An aspiration. An asset. Every American presidential contest has been won by the loftier man, it’s said. (Not true, apparently, but it says something that it’s believed.)
So it is with road cycling. Summits define many routes, and the more altitude, the better. Britain has nothing as aerial as the continent. No two-thousand-metre passes, no Col de la Bonette, Grossglockner or Pico Veleta. The highest domestic asphalt you can ride on goes up to the Great Dun Fell air-traffic radar station in Cumbria, which sits at 850m/2,789ft. (Higher than anything paved in Scotland, surprisingly.) It’s closed to public motor traffic but, being a bridleway, you can cycle it. Many do. But at the top – unless you continue on rough-stuff tracks – you have to turn round and whizz back down. (It’s one heck of a whizz, though.)
However… nearby, between Weardale and Teesdale in County Durham, clambering between fells that resemble a pod of humpback whales, are England’s six highest cyclable through-roads. Map-gazing one day I realised they made a satisfying, challenging day
