It was warm waiting in Hillsborough Park on Sunday morning, suspiciously warm for 9.30am. A mix up meant I missed Dexter (the ride instigator) but hooked up with Garf in Oughtibridge and we set off up to Green Moor Road to avoid the main road traffic.
Trying to stick to the shade it was getting a little warm out on the hills but we made our way over to a relativity quiet Homlfirth and cooled down a little on the fast run down into town.
Stopped for a decent cuppa , the talk was "you are not seriously going up there in this heat?" Yes we were seriously going up there.
Now I've never found Holme Moss too bad a climb as long as you have a gear you can twiddle, sit back and watch the view. Today was different 28 Celsius and the air was still and hot, heat radiating back off the tarmac. 1 1/4 miles from the summit (dam those road marking) head started swimming and pulse rate gone off the scale. Ground to a halt twice until I recovered a little on the final 1/2 mile. Summit reached with great relief in the painfully slow time of 40 minutes.
There were big numbers to be had on the descent but we had already agreed to taking it easy given the heat and the state of mind. Brakes on at 45mph, 55mph would have been reached easily on the day.
A bumpy run along the TPT to the closed Woodhead tunnel, a grim haul along the Woodhead Pass to Dunford Bridge, and then across the tops via the reservoirs to Wortley and a hard earned pint. Still the mercury was in the high twenties and the beer garden was abandoned for an arm chair in the shade
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