To descend into the inhospitable valley of Wildboarclough is to willingly march into a treacherous geological trap. Once you cross its borders, there is no easy escape; returning to civilization dictates paying a severe toll in elevation. To the northeast, the agonizingly long slog up toward the Cat & Fiddle will grind you out, while venturing south plunges you into an even deeper geographical cauldron, commanding an unrelenting endurance march back via the great heights of the A54 to Croker Hill. Alternatively, one could brave the steep, gritty, tree-covered meandering of the forest...

Yet, no one ever speaks the true name of our chosen battlefield tonight in polite company: Nabbs Road. Scaling directly toward the ominously named "Plague Stone" on the path toward Sutton, it is a devastatingly vicious ribbon of single-track asphalt entirely abandoned by sensible cyclists. Featuring a terrifying series of 27% hairpins, it is universally feared, historically extracting every final, gasping drop of biological energy from exhausted Sunday club-riders attempting to flee the valley. Like trying to ride out of the widening head of a vacuum cleaner, the prevailing weather typically turns the claustrophobic funnel of the road into an inescapable wind-tunnel of absolute despair. Even in the closing metres near the top, the other longer routes out of the valley suddenly seem more appealing, and the thought of just turning around and giving up is overwhelming.

In the days leading up to the race, a fiercely rare, howling Easterly gale had whipped across Macclesfield, promising to break the stagnant humidity and magically blast our surviving ascendants right up the cliff face. However, the mountain gods are inherently cruel, and this meteorological salvation didn't quite arrive. Shifting to a raw Northeasterly breeze on the night, the booming tailwind fragmented into a messy, turbulent crosswind. While it thankfully wasn't the horrifying block headwind of previous years, it left the air feeling desperately heavy and slow in key parts of the gorge. The last time a tailwind graced the hill was for its debut in 2021, so course records haven't been part of the conversation here for half a decade. With a course profile mimicking the ferociously steep launch of Smith Lane before eventually granting the slimmest, cruelest sliver of a "false flat", the master tactic for survival was unanimous. Everyone arrived entirely prepared to sprint headlong into the vertical cliff face until they inevitably detonated, gambling that the merciful leveling of the road would miraculously appear before gravity dragged them to a halt.

Perhaps sensing this agonizing reality, several anticipated heavyweights ultimately aborted their valley descents before the hostilities even began. We had dearly hoped to witness both Warren Jackson and Fred Wardle hunt for mechanical redemption after the chain-dropping horrors of Croker Hill, but while Fred successfully made the start, Warren ultimately remained on the DNS list alongside youthful speedster Seraphina Green. Also missing from the blocks was the massive, colossal mass of Mike and 11-year-old Sophie Merchant. Considering the terrifying geometry required to wrestle an elongated two-seater battleship through hair-pinning 27% switchbacks, skipping this venue was likely the greatest decision their rear derailleur will ever experience!

With a very distilled field of survivors marching on the valley, a deeply frantic series of 'races-within-a-race' unexpectedly waged before a single rider even clicked into their pedals. Taking supreme command of the sign-on board, two-time club champion Alison Dockney entered her own fierce time trial: The Race for Dinner. Sidelining herself from the actual racing tonight, she cheerfully confessed that doing the number administration was "any excuse not to pin one on!" Operating with the ruthless efficiency of an irritated traffic cop, she aggressively corralled the ascendants and distributed their numbers. Then, the very second the breathless riders rolled across the line post-race, she swooped upon them like a predator, ripping the sweaty numbers off their jerseys with one singular, desperate goal in mind: escaping as quickly as humanly possible to get home for a highly anticipated pasta meal. It must have been an unimaginably glorious plate of carbohydrates, because the moment her duties were fulfilled, she vanished into the twilight in a literal flash!

While Alison raced the clock for carbohydrates, Organizer Bhima Bowden waged two desperate wars against time of his own. First came The Race of the Wet Paint: watching paint dry has never been so thrilling. Finding no spare time during the busy week to maintain the sacred road markings, the organizer launched a desperate early pilgrimage to the summit equipped with little more than raw hope and a can of white paint. Re-drawing the weathered, faded finish line upon the precipice, a nail-biting waiting game commenced; it was an all-out, frantic battle to see if the drying air could outpace the arrival of the vanguard, ensuring the freshly painted finish strip wouldn't end up permanently tattooed across the scorching tyres of our gladiators!

Yet, Alison's lightning-fast admin was beautifully counterbalanced by disaster for the Organizer. Plagued by appallingly fatigued legs, Bhima Bowden had pulled himself off the start sheet at the 11th hour, hoping to desperately recover for a grueling weekend of training instead, assuming his legs could recover using strategic soft-pedaling throughout the evening. Navigating his massive, bag-loaded fat bike with comically over-inflated tyres to make the riding easier, he cruised down into the valley floor to organize the start grid. Then, a cold, icy dread seized him.

Checking his pockets with a mere nine minutes to 7:00 PM, he realized he had carried the critical finish-line timing equipment down to the bottom of the valley! With the towering stone walls of Wildboarclough actively blocking all cellular reception, ringing the timekeepers for a backup plan was entirely impossible.

In a split-second of pure horror, the very man who benched himself to preserve his legs was abruptly forced to blast his monstrous, heavy fat bike straight back up the 27% wall! And so began another "race within a race". Desperately trying to meter his effort so he wouldn't completely obliterate his weekend training blocks, his "measured" sprint still pushed him directly into a suffocating, VO2-max threshold zone. To the highly-focused combatants engaging in light, sensible spinning for their warmups, the sight was completely baffling; the organizer, also the scheduled start timekeeper, was blowing himself up on a tractor-like machine before the race had even begun. The race was undeniably on, but definitely not as they knew it!

Thankfully, salvation arrived halfway up the vertical precipice in the form of Nick Brownbill. Sent down to act as a highly specialized courier, Nick intercepted! Willing to turn the retrieval mission into a savage extension of his own warmup, Nick looked to rescue Bhima from the suffering, but order was successfully restored to the timeline as the climb was almost over anyway. Upon passing over the goods, Bhima plunged back down at record speed with only 1 minute to go!

However, warming up on this specific slope was proving to be a highly traumatic psychological ordeal for everyone. Coming up the gradient on their initial scouting runs, a wide-eyed Nick Brownbill looked at his fellow ascendants and solemnly noted, "It's not like I remember." Echoing this dreadful realization was Christian Fox, gritting his teeth on the pedals and nodding grimly. "Yep. It's still hard." The comment weighed heavily on Christian; his last full assault on Nabbs Road yielded a phenomenal, golden PB in 2022. Expecting the harsh, modern reality to cost him perhaps a full minute tonight, he nevertheless stood over his crossbar receiving start-line hype and encouragement as if his legendary course-record was in imminent danger. In hill climbing, sheer, delusion-level positivity is absolutely essential for survival!

Of course, the immediate fallout of this sprawling, equipment-dropping, paint-drying panic was that nobody had actually painted the start line! Complete, hilarious confusion rippled through the opening launch grid as riders frantically guessed where their front wheels were supposed to rest. This geographical uncertainty was wildly amplified by the severe camber of the lane itself. Because the valley violently kicks upwards from zero momentum, our designated holders struggled to physically balance the tightly-wound gladiators. When Edward Stubbs clamped into his pedals, his launch was notably wobbly, a testament to the unyielding gravity tearing at them before the whistle even blew. To the elite or wannabe-elite climbers traveling the country for manicured, highly-strung courses, this raw, grassroots chaos is exactly why Macclesfield remains such a brilliantly unique, authentic battleground. You simply cannot buy this kind of wild character!

To even possess the privilege of suffering on Nabbs Road, one must first physically survive the arduous journey just to reach the valley floor. For elite velodrome phenomenon Jenny Holl, the commute itself morphed into a high-stakes time trial across the peaks; another "race within a race". Having been pushing high wattages on the velodrome track all day, disaster struck when she missed her scheduled train to Macclesfield. Catching the very next train, her window to reach the start line had critically evaporated. Dropped onto the edge of the Peak District, she had to immediately cross a formidable ridge just to reach Wildboarclough. Staring down the imposing asphalt of The Hanging Gate, the brutally steep, pub-crowned climb destined to be the grand finale of our series in Round 16, Jenny was forced to hammer a 5:30 effort over its gradients. Though this panic-fueled ascent wouldn't trouble any records, burning this kind of tempo wattage before a 27% race was the last thing a track sprinter needs.

Yet, hauling this heavy fatigue into the Wildboarclough gorge perfectly encapsulates the deep, unseen logistical puzzle of grassroots racing. Hill climbing isn't merely about pedalling hard; it is a chaotic game of inventory management. Preparing for her own launch, Rebecca Bowler vividly demonstrated this precise, agonizing dilemma. Standing on the line, she desperately faffed with her saddlebag and heavy water bottles, frozen in tactical paralysis. If she dropped them at the summit before the race, she risked suffering a mechanical during her valley warmup and becoming utterly stranded. But if she carried the gravitational ballast with her on the actual race, she compromised vital seconds! It remains an enduring mystery how Rebecca solved this storage equation before the whistle, but she surged away courageously. Following exactly one minute behind her as Rider 18, the exhausted but raging Jenny Holl ripped the gradient apart. Clawing back almost an entire sixty seconds in the space of mere minutes, Jenny came agonizingly close to physically making the catch right on the summit line. Claiming the F SEN victory in a majestic 3:39.836, the track star proved she is lethal, regardless of what transport delays try to ruin her day, while Rebecca claimed a highly respectable 4:35.980 just ahead of the advancing threat.

In these frantic, unpolished moments, the true moral of our grassroots theatre is starkly revealed. For it is written in the cycling lore of the high moors that flawless perfection is merely a comfortable myth born of flatlands and indoor trainers. Here upon the jagged, unpredictable peaks, destiny fiercely favors the adaptable; true grit is not forged on a tranquil start-block, but in the chaotic, screaming fires of sheer panic.

This fierce psychological pressure on the starting blocks forces incredibly bizarre manifestations. While most racers silently hyper-ventilate, Kathleen O'Donnell fell victim to numerical hypnosis. Setting her limits on achieving a 5:20 completion time, it was the only thing her brain could process. Shivering over her crossbar, she nervously chanted to anyone listening: "5:20, 5:20, 5:20..." So totally locked was her mind onto this solitary metric that when the timekeeper solemnly raised a hand and loudly announced, "5 seconds!", Kathleen delightfully interrupted the countdown clock, replying brightly: "Yes, 5:20!" rather than focusing on clicking into her pedal!

For completely uninitiated riders like newcomer Chris Minto, looking at statistics proved far more dangerous than ignoring them entirely. Analyzing the course data prior to race night, he comfortably concluded: "9.5%, excellent." Naturally, upon actually arriving at the mountain, his innocent hubris was instantly weaponized against him. Taking to the trench, he hilariously realized his grave mistake: the climb looks absolutely nothing like a smooth 9.5% average gradient! Crashing headfirst into the colossal 27% wall that ruins the true mathematical reality, Chris nonetheless survived the horrific baptism, wringing out his engine to achieve his highest 3-minute power in recorded history. Seizing 11th overall in 4:06.180, a gasping Chris profusely thanked the community before vividly outlining his ascent: "Everything felt like it was going to explode at the end... short, sharp, brutal."

Elsewhere on the timesheet, a wiser David Watkins survived with his lungs perfectly intact. Heavily traumatized by a chaotic, bike-breaking mechanical meltdown during a prior commute, he wasn't taking any chances this week. Logging a fantastic 4:00.220 to break 9th place on the road, he happily survived his campaign backed by the ultimate insurance policy: his ever-patient wife stationed dutifully at the finish line, car engine running, ready to act as a sweeping broom-wagon if disaster struck once again!

While the older guard engaged in logistical safety nets, the younger generation sparked an outright turf war. Famously renowned for leaving essential race-gear at home, Junior powerhouse Seb Hines was casually asked on the starting line exactly what critical equipment he had forgotten this week. His deadpan reply? 'My legs!' His ultra-minimalist approach earned glowing admiration from Kathleen O'Donnell, who shared a brutal commute to the valley alongside him. Enduring the exact same punishing ride past The Hanging Gate that nearly broke Jenny Holl, Seb played the heroic guide, saving a lost Kathleen from taking a disastrous wrong turn at the junction. Deeply moved by their pre-race pedal, Kathleen equated the Junior to the elite young fell-runners she trains with: 'Very humble, motivated, persevering despite setbacks, and turning up with the shirt on their back!' Galvanized by this youthful inspiration, and despite Seb feeling sub-optimal on the night, his mighty 3:11.832 triggered a thrilling dogfight higher up the terrifying ramp.

Hunting down his one-minute marker, the immensely fast JUV talent, Henry Morley (4:07.756), Seb aggressively sought the catch on the deceptively evil "false flat" near the summit. The margin compressed. The roaring finish line loomed ahead. But as Seb bared his teeth to bridge the final meters, a beautifully ruthless display of racing awareness denied him. Throwing a quick glance over his shoulder to survey the rearward devastation, Henry caught a horrifying glimpse of Seb charging from the deep. Instantly dropping the hammer, Henry forcefully squeezed the very last ounce of power from his burning thighs, holding off the advancing predator purely through blistering willpower to deny him the physical overtake!

This fierce, lactic battleground on the uppermost "false flat" eventually played host to the grandest psychological trick of the evening. Rising like a chaotic mirage on the barren horizon, a mythical legend suddenly returned to the mountain! Shrouded in black and white fur, the hallowed "Macclesfield Panda" miraculously materialized at the exact crest where the agony seemingly plateaus. Highly notorious across the realm for roaring from the muddy, freezing banks of the National Championships, having such legendary mascot-support spontaneously injected onto our isolated wildlands is an unbelievably grand honour.

It is, of course, an open, beautifully unacknowledged secret that this fur-suited giant bears a wildly striking physical resemblance to Matthew Larkins, the brave soul who brutally wrestled a tiny, folded commuter Brompton bike up the 24% precipice of Pym Chair earlier this season. Indeed, "Matthew" was curiously spotted at the top of Nabbs Road just before the race, and noticed mingling with finishers afterwards... yet completely vanished into thin air at the precise moment the glorious Panda decided to roam the moors. We made no accusations, but merely pointed out the coincidence.

To a brain aggressively bleeding oxygen out on the tarmac, however, the appearance of an upright, screaming bear acts as a horrifying optical illusion. For the manifesting Kathleen O'Donnell, this fuzzy spectacle resulted in total biological devastation. Desperately praying to end the pain in her burning lungs, Kathleen saw the towering, billowing bear looming beautifully at the peak of the steepest section. Mentally collapsing amidst the deafening support of cargo-bike champion Chris Mountcastle ringing a bell literally directly in her ears, her brain delightfully decided the Panda was the finish line! Drawing on grueling recon from a fell-run she'd undertaken around the neighbouring Shuttlingsloe peak just days prior, she knew the hairpins would be 'short and sharp'. But realizing the true, unrelenting finish line was still drawn agonisingly further down the grinding 3% road sparked brutal mental mathematics. 'I realised I had one minute to get past the panda to the line if I wanted to reach my PB,' Kathleen recalled. Throwing her screaming legs into the final stretch, she rallied bravely to cross the timing strip in 6:06.618. Despite heartbrokenly missing her dream 5:20 goal, she dismissed the disappointment with the ultimate, cheerful climber's shrug: 'I knew at the top I hadn't got 5:20, but to hill with that! It was fabulous as always!'

Deeply entangled in this auditory madness of cowbells, screams, and bears was super-fan Phillip Coates! Proving his campaign logistics had finally found redemption, Phil gleefully declared, "I did manage to remember all my bike this time!" Deploying his trusted indoor rollers in the valley with the strict, disciplined intention of conducting a highly controlled, scientific warmup, he instantly abandoned all plans when he arrived. Unable to resist the call of the asphalt, he utilized the treacherous, actual road instead to feel out the early kicks. Having meticulously formulated his battleplan based upon heavy reconnaissance gathered from the fast elite leaders, strictly dictating: "get it done on the steep bits and don't worry too much about the rest", Phil stood ready for war.

Roaring out of the start line in fifth gear, he smashed full gas across a perilous 20 metre stretch of scattered gravel and treacherous water bleeding from the banks, rising out of the saddle to meet the opening vertical ramp. From here, extreme, hypersensitive calibration became survival!

"Out of the saddle, concentrating hard on easing the power down at a rate I think I can control," Phil recalled with staggering precision. "Too fast and your speed falls, too slow and your energy runs out." So intensely, obsessively locked was he upon the flickering numerical data on his cycling computer that the raw, spatial physics of reality simply dissolved around him! Bursting through the snaking right and left kinks on the steepest bends, Phil finally dared to peel his burning eyes from the screen to observe his glorious trajectory up the single-track lane.

Pure horror washed over him. He was scaling the completely wrong side of the blind corner! Shockingly discovering two entirely terrified riders actively trying to gently descend the gorge against the tide, chaos immediately broke out. Staring into their terrified, wide-eyed faces as they desperately pulled their machines into the hedges to avoid being physically rammed by a hyper-focused, head-down Veteran screaming up the 27% gradient, Phil deeply mourned the catastrophic breach of etiquette. "Not my finest moment this," he laughingly conceded to the heavens.

Rapidly abandoning the left hand lane to survive, the physical atmosphere took utter control. "Squeezing" every conceivable watt from the "lemon" of his tired engine, adapting instantly to invisible, sickening ripples in the incline, the sensory overload intensified! "I hear Nick's girlfriend on my left, then I hear my friend Tony to my right, oh and there's a panda dancing around as well... but things have suddenly changed and I've crested!" Hitting the dreaded false flat where Kathleen was fooled, Phil buried himself, focusing "on falling apart as you cross that line." Stopping the merciless timing watch at exactly 3:20.186, he suffered a terrifying, hacking fit of "climber's cough," desperately refreshing the timing screen to find validation for the torture. He didn't just survive; he shattered his all-time historic Personal Best by a monstrous 10.127 seconds to seize the supreme Master Veteran crown in 6th place overall! Reflecting deeply on exactly what that colossal shaving of time demanded of an aging aerobic system, the great Champion happily turned to quoting legendary racing driver Dick Johnson to summarize his magnificent peak condition: "It seems the greyer the hairs, the faster we go."

Behold the summit of the realm's hierarchy, where three gladiators stood locked within a brutal, chronological chain of destiny. Drawn sequentially onto the battlefield were Nick Brownbill as Rider 11, reigning overall Monarch Jack Morris as Rider 12, and the high-speed challenger, young Eddie Forster as Rider 13, the "poster boy", whose very visage proudly adorned the promotional heraldry summoning riders to this week's fray.

For Nick, this agonizing ascent served as his punishing swan song of the 2026 campaign. Bound for imminent, sun-soaked beach holidays on foreign shores, this effort was his final hurdle before entering an era of absolute leisure. Casting himself into the trench, he waged a valiant campaign for what would become a glorious 4th place finish in 2:51.995. Yet, there is no peace to be found within the crucible of Nabbs Road. Charging into the gloom from precisely one minute behind was the kingdom's apex predator. Pushing for the physical catch, Jack launched a terrifying royal pursuit, fiercely hunting Nick's wheel through the switchbacks. Barely surviving capture on the summit, a shattered Nick finally crossed the timing strip to successfully sheathe his sword for the year, leaving the blood, sweat, and tarmac entirely behind him!

But heavy rests the head that wears the climbing crown. Even sovereign kings suffer the terrors of the launch block. Minutes earlier, before Jack had even turned his fury toward hunting Nick, he stood squarely upon the start line and cast a nervous gaze backwards over his shoulder. Queued directly within his shadow as Rider 13, prepared to brutally hunt the King's own majestic time, stood the realm's official poster boy. Clad in the pristine colours of an Uno-X aerodynamic skinsuit, Eddie Forster looked every inch the conqueror.

The haunting sight triggered raw phantoms in Jack's mind. Merely weeks prior upon the towering slopes of the Cat & Fiddle, an elite Danish ghost named Casper, wrapped in similar Uno-X livery, had laid terrifying siege to the region's records. Openly rejecting the premonition that another high-aero specter might usurp his throne, the monarch utterly banished his fear. Stomping his foot down into a mammoth, punishing gear-ratio that openly mocked the physical laws of the gradient, Jack thundered from the valley floor, absolutely battering the wall in an explosive blur of supreme torque!

Closing out this fierce triumvirate, the poster boy furiously took to the mountain. Fueled by the heavy pre-race expectations of bearing the campaign's standard, Eddie launched a wildly spectacular assault upon the valley. Violently detonating the asphalt to cross the timeline in 2:50.072 for a podium 3rd place, he later solemnly surveyed his own monumental battle: "Happy with the power, but still a ways off the top two," he confessed. Acknowledging that dragging huge muscular frames across grinding 2-to-3 minute hyper-anaerobic efforts perhaps just doesn't fundamentally suit his highly specific physiological engine!

The 'Top 2' Eddie respectfully highlighted unleashed times so monumentally ferocious they effectively require carbon-dating to comprehend! Despite pulling that horrific, massive gear from the darkness of the trench, Jack Morris ultimately seized sovereignty in an earth-shattering 2:38.914 to take the definitive overall victory, ripping nearly 7 massive seconds off his blistering PB! But staring with dilated pupils at the times on his phone later that evening, even the roaring King's blood surely ran cold! Missing Jack's supreme overall dominance by a microscopic 684 milliseconds, capturing the 2nd step overall... Junior phenom Edward Stubbs laid down a devastating 2:39.598, actively erasing an unthinkable 28 seconds from his PB! If the unstoppable generational evolution of young Edward Stubbs wasn't keeping the elite ranks awake before this blistering evening, his arrival essentially alongside the ultimate climbing deity officially cemented his reign as an undisputed heavyweight title-contender!

Catching his breath, the shattered but completely unified remnants of our hill-climb armada traded intense war stories while observing the mesmerizing sunset that finally dipped below the horizon in wild, burning hues across the vast Cheshire plain. If, in theory, pacing on Nabbs Road was physically optimized in biological perfection, those vibrant evening views at the summit are fated to purely be witnessed as an incomprehensible blur of nausea. To truly savor the spectacular twilight reward, one ultimately must survive. As tired tyres coasted carefully down back into civilization through fading amber hues, one might ask: For what profit does a rider suffer such barbaric torments, when they might softly pedal upon gentle valleys instead? The answer lies in the communion of the summit. Here, amongst cheering beasts, clanging cowbells, and fierce generational rivalries, raw agony is miraculously transmuted into immortal fellowship; and the cruelest cliff-faces consistently yield our sweetest, most vibrant memories. Despite the pain enduring in her legs, Jenny Holl admitted on the commute back: "Hill climbing is lovely when the ride home looks like this".

Yet, one grim truth remains inescapable for our battered survivors... the heavy pain never stays away from Macclesfield for long! Settle your heartrates, clean those exhausted carbon frames... we will see you on the next savage cliff face for Round 13: Hollin Lane and Withenshaw Lane; two climbs joined together, literally round the corner from Nabbs. Ensure your spots early; things are only going to get faster!

Full Results: https://hillclimbproject.co.uk/race/?c=yZgbXK0Y3R#R
Shots from various people's phones, including launch videos for every rider: https://hillclimbproject.co.uk/shots/2026-07-17/
Photos from Paul Jones (£1.25 each): https://www.photodesport.co.uk/time-trials-1

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