Flat Earthers
When the author of 100
Greatest Cycling Climbs agreed to head out on a big ride for us, we decided to put him well and truly out of his climbing comfort zone and challenged him to find the flattest 100km in the UK. The Fens was the altitude untroubled destination.
Amonk, when he is cloisterless, is like unto a fish that is waterless.” Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales I know just how he feels. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure if Cycling Plus had sent this idea to the right Simon. As someone who makes a living writing about hills in all their glory, surely there must have been some confusion. The Earth isn’t flat, in any way shape or form. It’s lumpy, hilly and mountainous, and whatever the Flat Earth Society would have you believe, it’s most definitely round. To deprive me of quickly changeable altitude is to deprive me of the very reason I ride...
Alas, there was no mistake. This climber was to be removed from his natural habitat and forced to survive and somehow derive pleasure from these wholly unfamiliar surroundings.
Apparently, there are folk who don’t care for hills. I have yet to meet such a strange creature and I struggle to believe they exist. What is cycling without the battle to reach the top of a hill and the thrill of the descent on the way back down. Without rises and falls, where’s the enjoyment?
Cycling Plus wanted to know where Britain’s flattest 100km ride is. So as a process of elimination I looked in the places I’ve never been to while researching my books. First I turned to East Anglia, but while very flat bits abound there are also considerable lumps, so I looked further north. The Fens, surely they were the spot. Surrounding the Wash, the Fens occupy south Lincolnshire, north Cambridgeshire and the north-eastern part of Norfolk. Composed of reclaimed marshland first drained during the 15th century, then subsequently managed via a system of banks, dykes and pumps, the entire area sits a fraction above sea level and is very flat indeed.
Intrigued to find out if it would bring him out in hives, we exiled !"" Greatest Cycling Climbs author and mountainfanatic, Simon Warren, to the Fens in search of Britain’s flattest !""km