The carpenter leads the way

Mike B must have had his carpentry tools out when planning today’s route to Kemble; the straight edge across the map and the edge of his saw for the profile. We set our compasses on the requisite bearing of 150˚ for a full-frontal assault from the Kings Head up to Painswick Beacon. That brought our first “1 in 6” climb, with a swooping descent through Sheepscombe finding us a couple more on the way up to Bunnage Field. Through Bisley, and Limekiln Lane gave us a couple of similarly steep descents for balance. It also required a few excursions into bottom gear and some riders were beginning to wonder how a railway line could ever have been built to link Kemble and Gloucester. Thankfully the last serious climb up to Sapperton wasn’t quite so steep (Strava claims 8%) and it took us to the relatively flat run across to Coates and our destination of AV8 at Kemble aerodrome.