From West Surrey Cycling Club:
The Tour of the Hills is organised by West Surrey Cycling Club. This year will be our 41st year running the event, and this year we look forward to welcoming even more riders from all over the South East (and beyond) to enjoy what the roads of the Surrey Hills can throw at you. (Total entries will be capped at 200).
The Tour is a 115km route and takes in 2,300 metres of steep ascent on 14 major climbs including Box Hill, White Down, Coombe Bottom, Winterfold Hill, Leith Hill and finishing off with the infamous Barhatch Lane (for comparison, the main routes up Ventoux involve barely 1,600 metres ascent!) Many club riders find this an irresistible challenge, and a great day out.
The Tour of the Hills is organised and managed entirely by volunteers from West Surrey CC (we are a Cycling UK member club). The entry price is just £11 for Cycling UK and Audax members (with a £3 Audax temporary insurance supplement for non-members) – which is about the price of a coffee and cake in a typical Surrey café these days (!) But in addition to the Audax event itself, our entry price includes generous helpings of home-prepared food at the beginning, middle and end of the ride. The number of riders who compliment us each year on our carefully chosen, nutritionally appropriate food speaks volumes about the effort we take to ensure everyone is well fed and watered. There are also regular controls around the route staffed by friendly marshals doling out plentiful supplies of water and jelly babies.
Every year we run this event we get great feedback from riders. Here’s a sample from last year:
My heartfelt thanks to you and everyone from WSCC who helped out with the Tour of the Hills Audax. It was a great day, made all the better by the excellent organization and friendly faces of the volunteers. The coffee, cakes, sandwiches & squash all hit the spot. Most crucially, the handful of jelly babies just before Barhatch made the difference between triumph and exhausted, empty despair.
Many thanks for running such a superb Audax last Sunday. I can't imagine the effort you and all your helpers must have put in to ensure it all went smoothly, and we were all well fed. I hadn't ridden ToTH for about 4 years, but I'm well pleased I did it this year, and hope to repeat the challenge next year. Best wishes and many thanks to all at WSCC.
A huge thank you to you and the whole team for organising such a fantastic event. Such a good route, friendly people and so much food I’m sure I came back calorie positive which would be a first! Looking forward to next year.
Full details and online entry instructions can be found at:
audax.uk/event-details/10410-tour_of_the_hills
We hope to see your club members in August
Derek, and the Tour of the Hills team at West Surrey Cycling Club