The Cheshire Cobbled Classic is a 65-mile sportive inspired by the Tour of Flanders. It features twelve cobbled sectors, including the incredible ‘Corkscrew’, whose 45% maximum gradient makes it the steepest climb in the country.
The route contains a significant amount of climbing and the event builds to a climax as it returns towards Wilmslow on the iconic 25% ‘Swiss Hill’.
The event will have a Belgian theme, with a variety of Belgian foods, chocolate and a glass of Belgian ‘Leffe’ for every finisher. In addition, everyone who completes the course will be presented with a full-sized commemorative cobblestone, reclaimed from the very same roads that the event passes over!
The event is promoted by V-Sprint Classics, who organized the recent Tour of the Black Country. Event organiser Francis Longworth explains some of the thinking behind the Cheshire Cobbled Classic: ‘We’d been out to Belgium to do the Tour of Flanders sportive in 2012 as a club, and we wanted to try to recreate that sort of course back home in England, with a mixture of short, steep cobbled climbs and flat cobbled sectors. I knew about Swiss Hill, a 25% cobbled climb in Alderley Edge, which is used by Team Sky to prepare for the Tour of Flanders, and had also spotted a few other cobbled roads in the vicinity.
"We quickly found 10 or twelve other cobbled sectors, and when we discovered to 45% max. ‘Corkscrew’, we knew that we had a really interesting and challenging route on our hands. One of the great things about sportives is that you are not as restricted in your choice of roads as you would be in designing, say, a road race course. You can therefore put together really exciting and novel routes that take in a wide variety of surfaces and terrain that would be logistically very difficult to include in a standard British race.
"We also wanted to show that the roads in this part of England are as exciting - and demanding - as any in Europe, and to give people the chance to experience what it is like to ride in some of the famous one-day Classics. Riding fast over cobbles is a sensation that every cyclist should experience at some point; the heightened sensation of speed that the rough, juddering surface produces makes for a thrilling and adrenaline-filled ride’.
The Cheshire Cobbled Classic will be held on Sunday 5 October 2014, starting and finishing at Wilmslow Leisure Centre (Rectory Fields, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 1BU). Entries are priced at £25.
