On the 30th October, with one hour of extra sleep, or not, I attended the National Hill Climbing Cycling Championships at Old Shoe Hill, Llangollen, North Wales for some sports photography. This was the second Nationals that I have attended in this discipline of lightweight bikes and plenty of gurning faces. On this occasion I was being paid to help secure bike photographs for Road.cc and take personal shots too. It was a fabulous day's event, with a mixture of weather, loud crowds and the odd whiff of deep heat from riders going past.

The reason why I didn’t benefit from the clocks going back, was that I decided to sleep in my car. Although the weather was forecast to be warmer than when I slept in my car atop Winnats Pass (Peak Districts) the previous year, I must have parked on a slope and couldn’t turn over in my sleep without feeling really uncomfortable. Well, despite a dodgy sleep, at least there was a lot less rain than at the event up Winnats Pass. 

At a distance of 0.96miles with an average gradient of 13%, Old Shoe was a pretty brutal climb. Factor in a wet road surface, it made for rather tricky conditions. I decided to situate myself down by an Oak tree which randomly sat on the side of the road, which also doubled up as being the steepest section of the race course. This led to a lot of (what I now know how to term a face that looks in a lot of pain) gurning. This was captured in a lot of my pictures, which you can see below.

A stunning day overall with the winners Andrew Feather and Illy Gardner, topped off with a really nice sausage bap at the cafe up the top of the climb. Onwards to some Cyclocross now to finish off the season.