The club held its annual hill climb at the usual venue of Prospect Hill on 7th October and over 45 members rode out to either take part in or officiate at the event. This was the largest number of riders in the clubs history ever to attend this peculiar “sado masochistic” form of torture.

The weather was fine and bright but with a very strong westerly wind blowing which made conditions a little tricky and a hard ride out to the venue. For many this was to be their first ever hill climb or competitive event and was a baptism of fire. The hill is 1.1 miles long with an average gradient of about 15%. The time taken to climb it varied by about 5 minutes but to all it felt like 1 hour. There were several guest riders including Peter Hawkins, last year’s winner. Unfortunately Peter was not eligible for the trophy this year as he now rides for Usher RC. The clubs loss, Ushers gain!

37 riders lined up to start and the outright winner was Collin Humphrey in a very creditable time of 4mins 46 secs. This is 18 seconds slower than the record held by Simon Campbell but Simon was 40kgs lighter than Collin when he set the record!

Full results are shown below. Collin will be awarded his trophy at the club dinner. That makes two trophies in two years and a target for other club members to aspire to equal or beat in future years.