Toughest UK sportive The Monster set to accept entries

Website for it is down ?

It's a shame that bike rides feel they have to market themselves on how hard you're supposed to have to be to do them rather than the beauty and tranquility of the countryside for example. It looks really lovely in those photos but look at the comments on this forum, it's like a cycling version of the four yorkshiremen sketch; 'you only climbed 3,000 metres today, you were lucky, I ride to work at the top of K2, and I come home for my lunch!' . There's more to cycling than w##king over your garmin you know.

You don't need an organised ride to do huge distance and vertical ascent, just motivation and a map. Don't let folk tell you where to ride, find out for yourself.

This Lake District sportive on 29th June has to be in the running too. 4000m in 91 miles including all the iconic Lakeland climbs. It also accepts more than 50 entries! http://www.seismic-events.co.uk/tourofthehighpasses.html

Not quite the Bowland Badass is it?

The Ace 250 in the Australian southern highlands is 6700 metres over 250 km.

http://app.strava.com/activities/109000864

Those pics look very much like the Abergwesyn mountain road to Tregaron (including the Devils Staircase). i.e. the middle 150km of the 300km 4950m Yr Elynedd Audax, which returns via the mountain road to Rhayader. And as that is held annually in the usually foul weather of early April, I'd have to think about which would be tougher...

If the size of the food drop box wasn't limited, I'd be up for it

Blimey, all people do is whinge on here. How about some positive reaction to a guy trying to do something a little different. The offer of the 2nd event on day two for example or the delivering your personal refuel packs to drink stops for you...

Makes a change not to see the likes of wiggle cashing in on 2000+ riders for twice the price in it for the bottom line profit.

Do they measure climbs differently in the UK or something?! In Italy a 200k ride with 4000m climbing include 2-3 proper mountains and a big hill.... quite how they can amass the same in the uk in the same distance I don't get...

Coast to coast in a day (http://www.opencycling.com/) is 150mi/240km and ~4500m ascent.

Really well organized too

Some of the tougher audax rides - for ascent. I don't think that raw ascent figures tell the whole story

Hard Boiled 300km - starts at 2am, 4400m ascent, uses horrible lanes. Here's my blog post on it from last year

Merse and Moors 300km - 4200m ascent

Porkers 400km - 5900m ascent

Kernow and SW 600 - 8200m ascent. Here's some photos of it from a couple of years ago

Swan with Two Necks 600 - 8000m ascent

Mae Mr Pickwick...600km - 9500m ascent

There's also a 1300km ride in Scotland with nearly 18000m of ascent but that's more like a multiday tour

You can find details of all these at http://www.aukweb.net/events/

Well at £26 for 50 people, you can't accuse them of being in it for the big bucks.

Any details of the route?

There are none on the website (that I can see).