Chieveley Road Ride Preview

We've just finished riding the road course ready for this weekend so thought we'd give a bit of a preview of what to expect for those joining us on Sunday.

The route is basically made up of three linked loops, the short route riders do loop 1, medium route riders do loop 1 and 2 and the hardcore long route riders do loop 1, 2 and 3.

Loop 1 - Starts from Chieveley, heads through Hermitage, over towards Bradfield then up towards Goring and Streatley. From here the route heads up Streatley Hill which featured as a King of the Mountains climb in the 2008 Tour of Britain. It's also the venue for a popular local hill climb event with the course record standing at 2mins 21 seconds if you're looking for a challenge. After the reaching the top of the hill it's across through Ashampstead and back over towards Chieveley.

If you really want to see how you compare to the course record here's the official hill climb start and finish points
HHC005 Streatley Hill Climb Course

You can also check out the pro's heading up Streatley Hill over on you tube
Tour or Britain 2008 - Streatley Hill

Loop 2 - Heads in the other direction from loop 1 first towards Speen then through Boxford and onto Great Shefford. At Great Shefford those doing the long route start the third loop but for everyone else it heads up and round just south of Chaddleworth and Peasmore before returning to the finish.

Loop 3 - Starting from the split point and Drink Station at Great Shefford the long ride loop heads through Lambourn (known as the valley of the racehourses so watch out for lively horses on the roads), across the Lambourn Downs up towards Letcombe Regis before heading south and rejoining the end of Loop 2 for the last 10km or so back to the finish. Look out for Hackpen Hill which is a a great 10% downhill that seems to go on for ever, shortly followed by Court Hill, again hitting 10% in places but up hill this time.

Route distances are Fun 15 miles, Short 30 miles, Medium 50 miles and Long 70 miles.