It was another sunny day as we headed north once more to the picturesque but tourist bound village of Goathland, just because the TV series Heartbeat is filmed there it has become gridlocked with the cars of tourists. Must be an awful place to live. Bert bought a 1:50000 map here because there were lots of roads missing off our 1:250000 map. It seems that these may have been left of the old map because of the high incidence of 1:4 hills so the new map was a good buy. The shortcut from Beckhole to Grosmont was particularly impressive with severe gradients and fords across fast flowing rivers.
Soon after this we reached the object of this year's tour, the steepest hill in Britain and the only genuine 1:3. But a disaster in the planning meant that we approached it from the top! Calum couldn't stand it, six months of anticipation and then messed up at the last minute, it was too much. When we reached the bottom he turned straight round and went back up. We climbed the High Street in Glaisdale and stopped opposite the general store and an excellent butcher for lunch. We continued up Esk Dale all afternoon, every bit of road is steep so you're either grinding up in low gears at 3mph or enjoying a short whizz at 30mph, this makes for great cycling. After Kildale the terrain levels out quite a bit and we picked up speed but then turned off at Swainby for another terrific climb over the ridge and down the other side to Osmotherly. The hostel shop had beer for sale so we stayed in that night too exhausted for the one mile walk to the pub.