The Stats

 We didn’t include Littledale 1 in BB12’s list of climbs because it just got sort of abandoned in a short circuit repeater loop in TechnicalExpert’s vast and unwieldy brain. However, the Professor managed to hoik it out with a pair of electronic tweezers. This gradual climb out of Caton brings you to Crossgill at the base of Littledale 2. In essence it acts as an extended blandola entrée for the piquant little number that lurks at its head. It’s kinda hard to describe a climb that so subtly serves its purpose of bringing you from A to B with the minimum of fuss.

However, we’ve heard it said that it’s on this magnolia shade of a hill that you get the first tiny, jaggidy-jaggedy spikelets of doubt that your preternatural ability to climb like a sparrow on speed is in fact a monstrously delusional dream edifice constructed by you in all the spare time you wasted watching telly and boozing during the winter and spring months when you should’ve been out on your bike getting some hard miles in. Why think about failure so soon you silly softy? After all, you’ll have another 144 miles to contemplate it………..

Stravasaddoinfopoint: The Littledale Rd Climb segment (http://app.strava.com/segments/699939), which actually commences just upon leaving Caton, is dominated by the Lancasastrians again, all of them sworn local enemies of Professor Badass. If you break into the top 10 here you are going way too fast….oh, no, hold on…we notice that SCullen esquire is placed at number 9, and he did rather well on Badass 2012. Goddamn it! Another theory shot all to hell…….