South London hills

Thursday nights are no good for me.

Of course you would like to do the recce as well. Great. Whatever time is good for you damo.

No, I'm saying midweek is no good for me for extra stuff. I think I got the w r o n g end of the stick.
Let me know when you get Norths sorted.

Failed to climb Titsey (the White Lane route) today on a bike with gears. Excuses? Was getting pretty tired after riding 50 Kent miles, so was standing on the steepest bits, and because it was wet/greasy I was losing traction and hardly moving.

The real reason? I wasn't man enough to do it. Need to get training to make it up. Have found my nemesis, this will drive me to CONQUER THE HILLS!!! MWAHAHAHAHA!

it's a hard climb ... don't beat yourself up for it. i am sure you'll be fine after one or two tries.

Thought I'd best do something.

Favourite moment of Sunday: Smiff telling lady in the Jeep to "FUCK OFF" in true guttural south london.

I missed that. Once you get families in 4x4/people movers in the way it does start getting tricky.

Oli was making some funny noises on the tough bits of some of the climbs, I found that rather amusing!

Failed to climb Titsey (the White Lane route) today on a bike with gears. Excuses? Was getting pretty tired after riding 50 Kent miles, so was standing on the steepest bits, and because it was wet/greasy I was losing traction and hardly moving.

The real reason? I wasn't man enough to do it. Need to get training to make it up. Have found my nemesis, this will drive me to CONQUER THE HILLS!!! MWAHAHAHAHA!

It is a killer!

Try taking White lane that goes off to the bottom on the right so that at least you can relax in silence when walking. :) Titsey hill can receive a few lorries which is not nice when you are wobbling up hill.

Also try Star hill for an easier ride up on to the top of the downs. Still enough to get e sweat on though.

Favourite moment of Sunday: Smiff telling lady in the Jeep to "FUCK OFF" in true guttural south london.

One tries...

They were being cunts and they deserved it.

Although I did feel a bit bad afterwards.

So how was the ride? The north ride was great fun.

It was good, if you like hills...

Nah I thought it was fun, a fairly decent pace considering the terrain. I got my requested tour of South London's hilly bits, so I found it interesting. My legs still hurt, I'm not afraid to admit it!

Getting up at 6.30 on a Sunday morning is far too early. But damo was dead right about starting it early, because grunting your way up 20%ish inclines while out of the saddle on the drops and negotiating traffic is not ideal.

Also, I have noticed that this thread has had over 68,000 views, which is entirely disproportionate to the number of people that actually went on the ride. By comparison the ride north has had 3,500.

I have to admit, that there's probably more out there to find and I'd love to find more of them. They can't all be clustered around the bit we were in.

I intend on doing this more often at night. 7.30 ish seemed perfect again though, I'm not sure I'd like to be out with many more than were out on Sunday.

68,000 views on a thread started by me??? GREAT!

You are very humble Pascalo. That's lovely that is..

^^Your mouse finger must be sore. ;)

Not just my mouse finger ...

Riiiiisin to the top.

Sorry, this popped into my head. I went out and did some of this last night. I wish to state:
Canonbie Road is do-able the short side (from Honor Oak Park).
Attempting it *en masse *would have been carnage.

Was a bit bored this afternoon and needed a distraction, so went to have a look at some of the hills we missed on Damo's initial run. Didn't really have a route in mind (or a map for that matter) when I left so I just sort of cobbled it together as I went along.

Started with College Road (up), then Gypsy Hill, pwned Fox Hill, slugged up Sylvan Hill and then dodged my way past the school-run mummies on Cypress Rd. Back through Crystal Palace, down Westwood and then Up Wells Park Rd. Was just passing Canonbie on my way home and figured it would be criminal not to include it, so swung up there too. Could NOT be arsed with Westwood Park.

It was fun. Haven't done those roads in a while - there are so many nice variations you can add too. The College Road/Gypsy Hill one is good as you have the Dulwich Wood Park descent tucked in between. Will have to do this more often.

#NoWeaving
#coolstorybro

Can you plot the route you did? Sounds like a LOT of fun!

I can and I have :)

http://www.bikemap.net/route/978341

There are some others in this thread you may want to look at too, but it's pretty much all the same ridge...The bit down Beulah Hill was a navigational fuck up. In case you were wondering. There's really nothing to see there.

Last time I went up Canonbie I went back down so I could go up again! I grew up and went to school round that general area...can't believe I never realised there was fun to be had on two wheels round there.

I finally visited Canonbie last night, because it's so hot right now and everything. Default 69.6" fixed.

Not sure I could really compare it to any of North London's offerings, due to it being so short. It's vaguely like a mini Muswell Hill with a bend, at least insofar as how it feels to ride at pace; but with unnecessarily harsh speedbumps. Oh well, I can get on with the rest of my life now…

Did you do it both ways? Very short and very steep on t'other side.

Canonbie? No, I just used the short side to recover from the effort. Not exactly a must-ride is it.