All the cycling data and info you'll need to climb Crawleyside (SW #59)

Crawleyside hosted the British National Hill Climb Championships in 1984 (the year Darryl Webster won his second of four consecutive championships).  

The climb actually begins in Stanhope and travels north, passing through Crawleyside at 700 meters from the start.

A lot of straight at the finish of Crawleyside.

The 4.5% overall average grade of this climb is misleading due to a -4% descent for 330 meters beginning at kilometer 3.1, and the final three kilometers from that point averaging a mere 1.4%.  The challenge of this climb begins from the start, averaging nearly 10% for the first 1.3 kilometers.  

We were puzzled by Simon Warren’s statement on Crawleyside: “The final effort to reach the top of the moor is an arrow straight 14% section followed by a hard right-hand bend.”  As best we could tell from Simon’s map and the 100 GCC Book #59 Crawleyside, the final stretch is indeed “arrow straight” but is nearly flat.

Sometimes we get fooled -- we took several photos of what we thought was a

pretty cool canon before appreciating it was just a drainage pipe.  

Steepest ½ kilometer begins at 800 meters (11.6%).

Simon Warren’s #59 of the Greatest 100 Cycling Climbs in Britain begins in the eastern section of North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty:

“A real difficult climb in in Teesside, north east, east of Durham. The climb is steepest, just after the start.

 Although it eases off after half way, there are still some steep sections which come up on this variable gradient.

Crawleyside was the venue for the 1984 National Hill Climb Championship. It was won by Darryl Webster 9.18, Manchester Wheelers” (Cycling Uphill).

The climb begins at the western edge of Stanhope (population 4,581, 2011), a small market town in County Durham, situated on the River Wear between Eastgate and Frosterley, on Weardale’s northeast side:

Stanhope is surrounded by moorland in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) – the second largest of the current 40 AONBs in England and Wales.

Features of interest include:

• A petrified tree stump in the churchyard which was discovered with two others. One of the others can be seen in the Great North Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne.
• The Durham Dales Centre, which incorporates a tea room, tourist information and craft shops.
• A ford with a step-stone bridge for pedestrians.
• The eighteenth-century Stanhope Castle in the centre of the town stands on the possible site of a medieval castle. It was built in 1798 by Cuthbert Rippon, the MP for Gateshead.
• One of only two heated open-air swimming pools in the North East.

Stanhope Agricultural Show is held on the second weekend of September each year. It was founded in 1834 and has been held annually since, with the exception of the war years, the foot and mouth crisis and times of bad weather.” (Stanhope, County Durham).

Check out TripAdvisor’s page to read more about the top 10 things to do around Stanhope to help round out your visit, and be sure to also check out Crawleyside Bank while you’re in the area.  This is a small village (population 170, as of 2001) about 800 meters up the climb from Stanhope.  Located in a field to the west of Crawleyside Bank are the Crawley Edge Cairns, a series of forty-two Bronze Age cairns (Crawleyside).