Light as a Feather

Cyclist joins Andrew Feather at Rosedale Chimney Bank on his custom SWI LEVE to find out what it takes to bag one of the UK's steepest KoMs

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If you can ride in Yorkshire, so the saying goes, you can ride anywhere. And it's thanks to roads like Rosedale Chimney Bank - a 1.3km wall of tarmac that hits 30% in places - that this phrase exists.

Forget your training, your compact chainset, your dinner plate of mercy sprocket. Getting up this absolute pig of a climb is always a leg-shredding lung buster - unless, that is, you're a former UK Hill Climb National Champion riding one of the lightest bikes ever built.

Phone in hand, Andrew Feather leans over the handlebar of his SWI LEVE - bar tape-free, naturally - and casually thumbs through his Strava stats. 'Got it. Four minutes fifty-four,' he confirms.

From across the car park, a pair of imposing leather-clad bikers come crunching over the gravel.

'Can I just say you're completely mad!' one of them remarks. 'Fair play, I struggled to get up there with an engine,' the other says in disbelief.

These chaps are in awe of Feather simply for making it to the top in the first place. Little do they know he has just obliterated the segment record of 5min 19sec by a whopping 25 seconds.