Meet the UK's newest hill-climb

The Zig-Zag Hill-Climb is the UK's freshest grassroots race, and is now open for entries

- By Meg Elliot

The Zig-Zag Hill crisscrosses the Dorset hills in a series of hairpin bends at a 15% maximum gradient, over 3.8 kilometres. On Sunday 5 October, it will host a hill-climb event for the first time.

“The gradient isn’t anything special,” says event organiser Elliott Colyer of the climb he fondly refers to as “Dorset’s mini Alpe d’Huez”. “You can find steeper [hills] for longer, but the fact that you’ve got three proper hairpins back to back is quite unique.”

Elliott Colyer is 21 and fresh out of university. He was studying physics at Exeter and had found himself in the post-uni time warp, back at home and thinking about the future, as the long summer months stretched out ahead of him. So he decided to launch his own hill-climb.

Cowbells and coffee