Start: GR 544571 Finish: 535555
Height Gain: 157m Horizontal Distance: 2.8km
Category: 3 (on height gain but not length - given 3 as the road surface is poor).
Confucius he say; "Man who take on hill with little warm up suffers for rest of day". Well OK, Confucius pre-dated the road bike by about 3000 years. The wise words remain true...
Starting from the parish hall at Ubley may provide an excellent base and a pretty secure place to leave the car, but it's too close. There's also the little point that Ubley sits on a hill below the A368 so you get 50m of climbing straight out of the village. I suggest you start from somewhere else - either take the hill as part of a longer run or start from the car park at the bottom of Burrington Combe to give a run in. But what of the route itself..?
You start as you pass Compton Martin Post Office, pedalling east on the A368. The section along the A road is easy, a bit of a bank to get you in the mood round a sweeping left-hander (don't be tempted to take the right turn here, it's one too soon and a dead end). Taking the second right you'll immediately notice the broken road surface - get used to it, it only gets worse - and that the hill proper has started. The first 800m averages 1 in 8.5 (12%) with the bendy sections seeming a bit more than that. This part of the road is also especially poor so I kept needing to change which of the two strips of cleanish tarmac I was using - this is OK as the middle is only mossy, not grassed! One or two of the bends also respond to an active choice to dodge some of the steeper inside banks.
Once the road finds the little valley in the side of the hill it falls back a bit, the next 500m is only 1 in 13.5 (7.3%), but it still felt tough to me after the steeper lower section, Ubley village and no sensible warm up. I rather think it might have felt fairly tough anyway. This continues up to a straightening of the road and the end of the hard part. The hill continues for about a further kilometre but it's easy cruising now, up but it hardly counts.
Rating: Tough but OK. The body of the hill is only just over a km long so definitely not worth a specific trip to do, but reasonable to include as a hard challenge in a longer route. I wouldn't recommend a descent of this, too steep for the channels of tarmac available. Given the proximity of the B road route up Harptree Hill, which takes on a very similar challenge, I suspect that Highfield Lane will see little traffic apart from hill collectors. Look out for the Harptree Hill description when I do that one.
DP
Height Gain: 157m Horizontal Distance: 2.8km
Category: 3 (on height gain but not length - given 3 as the road surface is poor).
Confucius he say; "Man who take on hill with little warm up suffers for rest of day". Well OK, Confucius pre-dated the road bike by about 3000 years. The wise words remain true...
Starting from the parish hall at Ubley may provide an excellent base and a pretty secure place to leave the car, but it's too close. There's also the little point that Ubley sits on a hill below the A368 so you get 50m of climbing straight out of the village. I suggest you start from somewhere else - either take the hill as part of a longer run or start from the car park at the bottom of Burrington Combe to give a run in. But what of the route itself..?
You start as you pass Compton Martin Post Office, pedalling east on the A368. The section along the A road is easy, a bit of a bank to get you in the mood round a sweeping left-hander (don't be tempted to take the right turn here, it's one too soon and a dead end). Taking the second right you'll immediately notice the broken road surface - get used to it, it only gets worse - and that the hill proper has started. The first 800m averages 1 in 8.5 (12%) with the bendy sections seeming a bit more than that. This part of the road is also especially poor so I kept needing to change which of the two strips of cleanish tarmac I was using - this is OK as the middle is only mossy, not grassed! One or two of the bends also respond to an active choice to dodge some of the steeper inside banks.
Once the road finds the little valley in the side of the hill it falls back a bit, the next 500m is only 1 in 13.5 (7.3%), but it still felt tough to me after the steeper lower section, Ubley village and no sensible warm up. I rather think it might have felt fairly tough anyway. This continues up to a straightening of the road and the end of the hard part. The hill continues for about a further kilometre but it's easy cruising now, up but it hardly counts.
Rating: Tough but OK. The body of the hill is only just over a km long so definitely not worth a specific trip to do, but reasonable to include as a hard challenge in a longer route. I wouldn't recommend a descent of this, too steep for the channels of tarmac available. Given the proximity of the B road route up Harptree Hill, which takes on a very similar challenge, I suspect that Highfield Lane will see little traffic apart from hill collectors. Look out for the Harptree Hill description when I do that one.
DP
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