Rapha's Hell of the North (London) is now in its fifth year and is fast becoming a favourite early(ish) season ride for London's cyclists. Ridden on the same day as Paris-Roubaix, it is a roughly 100km ride from Highgate to a pub in Barnet, taking in the lanes, bridleways, fields and tracks around Hertfordshire. All 350 places on the free-to-enter ride went in under an hour, demonstrating just how popular it has become (although I'd estimate only about 250 actually rode it - one of the downsides to having free entry).
Registration was from 9am to 10am in Highgate's Pond Square, home to celebrities such as Kate Moss (not spotted this Sunday morning). I was slightly surprised standing round waiting to register and get my route card at how few of my fellow riders were wearing Rapha. I'd estimate perhaps 30 per cent were sporting Rapha, perhaps a reflection of this year's entry process (which was via Rapha UK's Twitter feed) which made it more 'democratic' than previous years.
Quite a lot of people were wearing the special edition Rapha Hell of the North pink cap, which was available for £15 a couple of weeks before the event on the Rapha website. Apparently all 500 caps sold out in less than 24 hours, meaning a lot of those riding the event weren't able to purchase it (who are all the people who bought it despite not doing the ride?).
Route card in hand, we were given a short briefing from an organiser about where the route would take us (we were promised plenty of "gravé" along the way, in lieu of pavé) and told that there was a special surprise on the course. There was also mention of a feed station about 65km into the ride.
The stylish pink route card pointed out that this was a social ride, not a race, that we should "accelerate over the rough stuff, with hands on the tops" and "No smiling (remember, you're a Belgian)". Inside the route card was a pink patch for the Hell of the North, ready to be sewn onto a club jersey. Most importantly, the route card entitled you to a free Belgian beer and frites at the end (which is why the pictures of the route card are torn as that shows I claimed them).
A group of about twenty of us headed north up the A1000 towards Barnet, led by riders from Brixton Cycles CC in their distinctive Rastafarian colours. Around Cockfosters we headed east to Enfield and then pretty much headed due north up to Hertford.
I was riding with Dan, an old university friend with whom I am doing La Marmotte in July. I was riding my winter bike, a Condor Fratello on which I had removed the mudguards and fitted 28mm tyres (as suggested by the organisers, who publicised that anything less than 25mm would be unwise), but it was interesting to see what others were riding. Chosen steeds seemed to be everything from quite expensive carbon road bikes to cross bikes (probably the most sensible option) to mountain bikes with fat tires.
The route was extremely well marked throughout with Rapha signs or sticky tape at every junction and on lampposts, trees and gates along the way. Whoever went out and put the signs up (and then took them down again on Monday) did a great job. We only went wrong once, ending up under the Welwyn branch of Waitrose, but that was down to our incompetence rather than the signage. The route was also very inventive with a great variety of terrain and some beautiful views of a Hertfordshire countryside that I'd always assumed might be quite dull (no idea why I thought that).
Along the 106km route (according to my Garmin) there were 17 different sections of so-called gravé, ranging from woodland paths to rutted fields, steep and narrow gravel paths and even a section across some school playing fields (and there was even a gate to climb over at one point). As conditions were dry and sunny the riding was relatively easy but I did think at times that if it had been raining for the 48 hours before the ride then it could have been truly hellish. That's not to say it was always simple - there were several tracks that were so rutted that my body was reverberating for about two minutes even after getting back onto tarmac. For those with 23mm tires I suspect there was plenty of puncture action.
The surprise of the ride came at Welwyn Garden City where we rode into the velodrome and did a circuit (in true Paris-Roubaix style) before queuing at the feed station for cake, coffee and bananas. For those of us who had never ridden in a velodrome before, it was a pretty good surprise (so much so that we did an extra circuit after that).
From Welwyn we headed south, past Hatfield, slightly west of Potters Bar and then down past Borehamwood. This section of the ride seemed tougher than the opening two thirds, but perhaps that was just because of the miles already in the legs. Dan managed to get a puncture on almost the last bit of gravé, so we were slightly delayed heading to Barnet to the Prince of Wales pub, whose garden was packed with tired cyclists enjoying beer and frites in the sunshine and desperately trying to see the outside TV screen that was showing Paris-Roubaix.
Indoors were the serious cycling fanatics, all hoping Terpstra's breakaway would be caught, preferably by Cancellera. I have to confess that the room was so packed I gave up all hope of squeezing myself in and instead found a space in the sun to focus on rehydration with Leffe.
Rapha deserves lots of praise for putting on an event like the Hell of the North. Organising a long ride like this takes a lot of time and effort and with free food and drink for all participants it must cost a fair bit too. Thanks to the weather it wasn't particularly Hellish, but it was enormous fun and I will be first in the queue for The Hell of the North London 2015.
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