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Do you have your own hill quest? Cotswolds cyclist looking to tick off almost 600 local climbs

Cyclist sure the psychology behind his esoteric single chevron Strava quest must be widespread

Simon Boswell has been aided in his hill quest by Tony Payne who volunteered to take a corresponding ‘armchair quest’ to identify them.

“After much discussion over what constitutes a ‘hill’ we decided to exclude anything with under 10m of 14% climb. This is somewhat arbitrary but it seems to successfully exclude steep drives while including short hills. This still leaves nearly 600 hills to climb.”

This map, created from freely available Ordnance Survey road and elevation data sets, is the result and there is also a corresponding map, based on Boswell’s Strava logs, which shows which ones he’s ticked off so far.

Boswell says there is something about the psychology of cycling for fun rather than for speed which he feels sites like Strava don’t really promote, but points out that the use of GPS data allows cycle tourists to share ideas and build their own leaderboards.

"I’d be interested to find out from other readers whether anyone else has got some of these ‘quests’. There are obviously some more obvious ones – long routes, all the hills in the Top 100 Climbs list, etc – but what about the more esoteric ones? Is there an equivalent to the ‘visiting all 92 league grounds in the country’ type of quest?”

He points to Cycling UK’s British Cycle Quest challenge as being another example, although he notes the most recent leaderboard is dated January 2015.

So, do you have your own hill quest or similar? Let us know below.

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

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9 comments

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Walbrook | 8 years ago
0 likes

There is always OCD: http://www.aukweb.net/ocd/

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Leviathan | 8 years ago
0 likes

"esoteric single chevron Strava quest"

OS maps have a chevron symbol on steep climbs. Translates as Pointless hill climbing challenge.

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Daveyraveygravey | 8 years ago
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I did the big ones in Brighton last weekend, great fun trying to plan a route without too much doubling back or just going up a hill to come back down. I left Ditchling and Devil's til the end, getting tough.

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joeribbons | 8 years ago
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Being a local to Holmfirth, this year I'd aimed to climb Holme Moss 100 times (a big goal for consistency more than anything).

Considering a bell curve progression I was on track throughout January and February, and then I went back to University. Maybe next year  7

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NeilG83 | 8 years ago
1 like

Interesting project, but living locally to some of the climbs in Cheltenham I know that some of them are unpaved roads, footpaths, driveways or private gated roads. If Simon reads this I'm happy to give him more info.

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Sanderstorm | 8 years ago
0 likes

14% for > 10 meters? hmmm wouldn't that disclude Ventoux from Bedoin?

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DaveE128 | 8 years ago
3 likes

Does that subtitle make sense to anyone else?

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Mr. Sheep replied to DaveE128 | 8 years ago
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DaveE128 wrote:

Does that subtitle make sense to anyone else?

Not me... I read it about ten times trying to parse it and in the end read the article just to try and work out what the subtitle meant. I'm still totally confused  1

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tritecommentbot | 8 years ago
0 likes

But speed is fun 

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