'S no problem - Gospel Pass Brevet, 28 February 2004

All the photos on this page were taken by Alan Jenner - who is the chap pictured, and one of the intrepid 5 who completed the ride. Click on the little photos to see bigger versions

This early season 150 is one of my favourites. I have ridden it twice on gears, and this would be the fourth time I'd done it on fixed. It's far from a flat ride; it garners only ½ an AAA point but even the flatter bits are undulating….and then there's the Gospel Pass itself.

There are a couple of steep sections at the bottom of the Pass which I've never managed to ride on a 69" fixed, so this year I thought I'd cheat. I hadn't reckoned that the God of fixers doesn't like cheats. There had been snow in Wales during the week and there'd been some discussion on the Audax UK emailing list about whether the ride was going to go ahead. I'd posted the Met Office forecast for the Brecon Beacons National Park, not too far from Hay Bluff and the Gospel Pass:

"Very cold again but mainly bright or sunny with just the chance of one or two further snow showers. Again, brisk winds will lead to severe wind chill and cloud will lower enough at times to give patches of hill fog. Visibility will be mainly very good but poor in any snow showers and very poor in patches of hill fog. Cloud will be scattered with bases around 700 to 900 metres, but lowering and thickening in any snow showers to as low as 300 metres, giving patches of hill fog. Winds at 800 metres will be northerly, 30 to 40 miles per hour with temperatures of minus 4 Celsius. The freezing level will be between 300 and 400 metres."

The pass is at nearly 600 m, so it was going to be cold and windy up there, and maybe a bit snowy. That decided which bike I was going to use - the Cannondale, with 37 mm Specialized Armadillos and about 2 inches of mudguard clearance. Just as I was going to bed on the night before the ride, it started snowing in earnest. Not a good omen. Next morning there was a sprinkling of snow over West Berkshire but it disappeared as I headed West along the M4. I took the traditional miser's option of leaving the car on the English side of the old Severn Bridge and cycling to the start. It's only a couple of miles and it saves the bridge toll as well as the cost of parking in Chepstow. Actually this ride finishes closer to the bridge than it does to the start, so this is not quite as parsimonious as it might seem.

I was running a bit late as I joined the cycle path over the bridge but I was heartened to encounter a chap from Bristol who was also heading for the start. Less heartened when he decided that my monumental struggle into the headwind was not monumental enough, and disappeared over the horizon with a cheery "Think I'd better get a move on or I'll be late".

I wasn't too worried - Nik Peregrine traditionally has a relaxed attitude to handing out Brevet cards and generally getting people off on time. I caught a couple of others on the way into Chepstow and as we swept into the carpark I could see I had plenty of time: there was the traditional throng of people collecting cards. As 8 am approached, Annemarie Manley took pity on Nik and helped him get the riders on their way. As usual I forgot the cycletrack shortcut on the way out of Chepstow, and gritted my teeth for the long climb up to Tiddenham Chase. There was snow on the verges here, and Nik had suggested that we deviate from the route after St Briavels and carry on to Coleford rather than drop down the lanes to the Wye in case they were icy. It's a fair climb up to Coleford, and even though it's downhill from there to Monmouth I didn't much fancy it. I was in a group of four or so, and when we stuck our noses down the turn after St Briavels, it looked OK. And so it transpired. The road had been salted and it was a clear, fast run down to the river and on to Monmouth.

As we entered the town, I turned left and cut through to Monnow Street; the others followed the town centre signs and turned right. This ruse gained me a couple of hundred metres on the others but now I was on my own. Oh well. The stretch from Monmouth to Grosmont was once described to me as "corrugated". As I strained up the inclines and swooped down the descents there was more and more of the white stuff at the side of, and then on, the road. After Newcastle, the official route goes left to Cross Ash but I stayed on the Brevet Cymru route to Grosmont. It's the same distance but a slightly more major road; I figured it might be less snowy. As it happened it wasn't. I had a slippery few miles and those on the official route had a clear run.

From Grosmont it was a fastish run on clear roads to the first control at the Pontrilas garden centre. This was the first time Nik had used this control and that would have been a good reason to stop there on such a cold morning, even if the carrot cake and friendly, fast service hadn't been so appealing. From Pontrilas the route follows the Golden Valley of the River Dore to Hay-on-Wye. Gets my vote for the best geographical pun in Britain, and a very pretty area to boot. Despite the killer headwind. Oh, how I suffered along here on the upright Cannondale with its flat bars. Ha, I thought, my time will come…..as I looked leftwards at the snow-topped hills above the Gospel Pass.

I got my card stamped at Hay and left without refreshment: the Café here is very good but service can be soooo slow. Here's where the cheating bit comes in: I turned round my wheel at Hay. There, I've said it. I had a sneaky bigger sprocket on the other side of the double fixed hub. In my defence I can only say that this was the first time I'd succumbed. Usually I can't be bothered changing gear this way; it strikes me as being more trouble than it's worth and somehow slightly dishonest. But there was the Gospel Pass to come, and with the dodgy 57" gear I might at least be able to ride up it all. At least, that was the plan.

Hay was snow-free and the road was clear almost up the start of the climb proper. Just as I was starting to enjoy the sensation of (comparatively) pain free climbing I saw a cyclist coming down towards me. "Oh, mustn't be too bad then, he's riding a lightweight bike with skinny tyres and he's come over" I thought. He called out "follow me". Ah, maybe I've misjudged this. Three more come down the hill, indicating towards Hay: "Pass is shut. Turn back". Hmmm. I'll keep going. Two more; this time I flag them down. "It's really shut ?" "Yeah, two feet deep up there. Locals say its impassable even by car". Hmmm again. "We've been to the cattle grid at the bottom and it's unrideable. If you go on it's a long walk…." Hmmmmm. "Well, I've walked the damn hill the last three years, I've got boots and a Gortex on, it's sunny and I've got plenty of time". (no sunglasses though). "I'll at least go to the cattle grid and see what it's like".

They did everything they could to dissuade me short of knocking me to the ground, but I guess they figured I had the strength of ten men. Whistling a merry tune I turned the next corner, lost traction on the icy snow and stopped. It was too steep and icy to get going again even after taking about 30 psi out of the tyres, so I started strolling. The snow got to a couple of inches deep but the big problem was that it was compacted from the cars I could see further up the hill. Maybe if I got past them it would be easier. I got past them and it wasn't any easier. A family came down the road on sledges. I saw a man with two Huskies. I carried on walking up past the cattle grid and the steep little bit at the bottom of the pass proper. The sun was shining and I was very hot from the effort of pushing a big heavy Cannondale up a snowy hill while wearing a heavy Gortex jacket. No chance of hypothermia, at least.

	With the sweat in my eyes and the glare from the snow, I couldn't see very much. But I could see that I'd got onto the steadier gradient, that the snow was less disturbed and that it was still only a couple of inches deep. Try riding again ? I lowered the saddle as far as I could (first time I've used that qr seat clamp in the seven years I've had the bike) and flipped the pedals to the non-SPD side. This way I could keep my weight as far back as I could to maximise traction and get my feet down without stopping to minimise falling off. This worked fine until, after an emergency slide/stop, I got my pedal sides wrong and the SPDs engaged just as the front wheel slid out. Typically, I landed in the snow just in sight of the only other human beings on the pass - a family disembarking from their 4WD for a high altitude snowy Saturday afternoon. The going was a lot easier now, and most of the road was rideable. It was astoundingly beautiful up there in the bright sun, under a blue sky, and I felt very honoured to have experienced it. It was damned good fun too, ploughing a lonely furrow through the crispy snow. It was almost a disappointment when I reached the top. Particularly as from here it goes downhill (no surprise there…) and that was likely to be as interesting as the ascent. And so it proved. I slipped and slithered down, braking with my legs and the front hub brake. Did I mention that the Cannondale doesn't have a back brake ? Luckily the hub brake is so ineffectual that even on icy snow there was little danger of the wheel locking up. I only fell off once on the way down…..past Capel-y-ffin the road had been gritted and the snow patches were intermittent. After a mile or two of increasingly rapid spinning down the Vale of Ewyas I stopped to turn the wheel back round. This really is a pain in the backside and I don't think it's something I would do too often. But on the Gospel Pass it had made the difference between a slippy ride and a slippy walk. The Mighty Bite in Abergavenny has changed hands since last year, and while the staff were friendly the food was, well, a bit too fast for my liking. Here I met a few of the other riders, who'd found a route round via Talgarth. These were the same guys I had seen turning back at the foot of the pass, so my snowy adventure had taken no more time than the ice-free route. And I bet I had more fun.

From Abergavenny the route follows that of the Brevet Cymru out to Usk via Kemeys Commander (always reminds me of an old British Motorbike), Gwernesney and Llangwm-isaf. Nik has marked this on the route sheet as a "long climb" which is certainly true, if perhaps failing to do justice to the true nature of the road. Which actually goes up quite gently for ever and ever, then turns the corner into the wood and goes up again for quite a lot more, but a little more steeply. All in a very scenic way, of course. I always enjoy this climb on the Gospel Pass Brevet, on the grounds that I'm not doing it at 2 am at kilometre 380 of the Brevet Cymru.

My lack of food since Pontrilas caught up with me at the top of the climb and I had to stop to eat, even though it was only 10 or 15 km to the end. I took the opportunity to get really cold here too: a combination of falling air temperature and the copious moisture levels inside my jacket (still dressed for the Gospel Pass). Still, I knew Nik had laid on a couple more little hills to warm me up again.

The Brevet Cymru route stays on this road pretty well to Chepstow, but Nik's route deviates through Shirenewton and Mounton. It's undoubtedly far more scenic and it takes in the most unlikely roundabout I've ever encountered. It's a very nice, verdant little roundabout. It's just that a tiny hamlet of about three houses on a windy, hilly little country lane really isn't the first place you'd expect to find it.

And so on to Chepstow, valiantly holding off the two riders who've been catching me since my food stop. I have no idea why I did this: perhaps it was some machismo thing; more likely a wish to preserve the perfect symmetry of having ridden pretty-much on my own all the way from Monmouth. Nik was waiting for us at the finish, a burden eased by arranging to have the finish at a sports club with an excellent bar, cheap beer and friendly clientele.

Just after I handed over my Brevet card, four more riders appeared: they'd also made it over the pass. I don't know how many more of the 38 starters did so but I don't think it was very many….

Postcript: There were 118 entries, approx 38 starters and around 20 finishers, of whom only 5 went over the pass.