My "overkill" setup did, however, enable me to cycle up Hardknott pass in the English Lake District, the steepest bit on that hill is supposed to be about 30%.
Alas! We were all younger and fitter c1977. Congratulations.
I've been over the Hardknott Pass on foot (conclusion: machismo is stupid) and twice in Range Rovers I was testing for various magazines thirty years apart. I much preferred the Range Rover Way...just saying.
Anyone tempted to emulate Martin's Epic Transit of the Hardknott should note that it may be hours, perhaps even days, before a car comes along, so make sure your bike is in good order and you have enough spares with you.
And mind the feral sheep. There was this ram, who apparently thought we coveted its females, who head-butted the door of the Range Rover, through which I'd just escaped its enraged attentions, so hard that it got stuck by its horns sticking through the aluminium doorskin. I climbed over the centre console and my companion, and gave the jack another couple of strokes so that the ram's front feet we're off the muddy road and it hung from its horns at an angle where it couldn't release its horns by scrabbling in the slippery mud with its hind feet. Then I packed the flat wheel away neatly, checked the wheel nuts, and stood for a couple of minutes fixing angles and distances in my mind while the bloody ram stared at me with bloodshot eyes, probably trying to convey, 'Are you dissing me by working right here in my personal space?' I said to my companion through the sunroof, 'Wind down the rear passenger window on my side.' Then I grabbed the ram by the lowest joints on its rear legs and lifted its back end so it could free its horns from the door. It twisted around with unbelievable speed, presumably hyper-motivated by my impertinence in coming so near its only reason for existence, but I was already twirling like a Scottish rugby forward tossing the caber at the village sports day, and when the animal was high enough and I was moving fast enough, let it go to fly over the roof of the car to land about fifty feet on the downside of the mountain to give me time to salvage the jack, which I thought, correctly, we would need again, throw it through the back window, get into the car and get it moving. That ram was incredibly fast because in the less than the ten seconds it took me to let down the car and throw the jack into the car and me through the driver's door, it reached us and, as the car passed it, used its horns to score the rear quarter of the car.
I've been convinced ever since that you can't hate sheep enough.
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