ROUND THE BEND

Simon Warren is tasked with a seemingly impossible mission: plotting a British route packed with switchbacks – and rises admirably to the challenge

Simon Warren

Who doesn’t love a switchback, a hairpin bend, a proper 180° turn? It’s what we cyclists dream of, swinging back and forth through shoelaces draped across an Alpine hillside. As soon as you hit them you’re transported to scenes you’ve watched in the Grand Tours, and you imagine climbing in the tyre tracks of legends, rapidly ascending under a blazing sun. These marvels of engineering are commonplace in the mountains of Europe; our continental cousins are blessed with countless kilometres of bends rising to snow capped peaks. Unfortunately our small island is rather a hairpin desert, so when Luke Edinburgh from the website Switchback Saturdays contacted me suggesting I plot a switchback route in the UK, my instinct was to laugh. “A ride in Britain, packed with hairpin bends? That’s…

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Cycling Plus (Digital) - 1 Issue, September 2024

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