Which is England's highest road? | Riding the top six in one day

Height matters. When we were children, our dad measured us with chalk on the garage wall each birthday. Tall was good. An aspiration. An asset.

Every American presidential contest has been won by the loftier man, it’s said (it's not true, apparently, but it says something that it’s believed).

So it is with road cycling. Summits define many routes – and the more altitude, the better.

Britain has nothing as aerial as the highest roads in Europe. No 2,000-metre passes, no Col de la Bonette, Grossglockner or Pico Veleta.

The highest domestic asphalt you can ride on goes up to the Great Dun Fell air-traffic radar station in Cumbria, which sits at 850m / 2,789ft (higher than anything paved in Scotland, surprisingly).

It’s closed to public motor traffic but, being a bridleway, you can cycle it. Many do.

But at the top – unless you continue on rough-stuff tracks – you have to turn round and whizz back down. It’s one heck of a whizz, though.

However… nearby, between Weardale and Teesdale in County Durham, clambering between fells that resemble a pod of humpback whales, are England’s six highest cyclable through-roads.

Map-gazing one day, I realised they made a satisfying, challenging day trip. The country’s roofiest summits, bagged in one go.

Which is the the very top? Sources disagree – some maintain it’s the A689 outside Nenthead.

Others insist it’s Chapel Fell at Harthope. Bloggers cite conflicting handlebar GPS data.

So what is the truth? Which is England’s highest road pass? I rode the top six one summer day to find out for sure, armed with Ordnance Survey evidence. Here’s what happened…

Summit A: Newbiggin to Westgate at Swinhope

Height: 609m / 1,998ft (joint 3rd highest road)

I cycle west across moorland from Bishop Auckland train station. It’s grouse season.

I head past the shooters, then through the pleasant centre of market-town Middleton.

I refuel at a pavement-table cafe and continue up the valley to Langdon Beck Youth Hostel – £12 for a dorm bed. It’s remote here: Hexham’s Waitrose is 31 miles away.

Upper Teesdale feels unfamiliar. There's no sign of any hamlets or villages, only isolated white farmsteads speckling vast, sparse, grey-green fellsides.

It could be rural Norway, or the Faroes. Cronkley Scar, the Uluru-like northern extremity of ceremonial Yorkshire, glows bronze in the sunset.

In Langdon Beck’s pub – hard to miss, there’s little else – the farmers are talking about a stolen quad bike.

They think they know the culprit thanks to the tyre tracks, which take a path only known to locals.

Next morning is clear and chilly at England’s highest youth hostel. The first peak to tick off is the old drove road between Newbiggin and Westgate.

I outnumber motor traffic all by myself, climbing steadily up this narrow tarmac strip. It’s crowded with gormless sheep though, and fertilised lavishly with poo.

Perhaps they’re stray descendants of those first drove flocks.

Up top, I get the first of my succession of celestial views: gaunt Teesdale down behind me; the more upholstered Weardale in front.

The whoosh down is fast and unsheeped. There’s a house halfway. Fancy living out there.

Summit B: Chapel Fell at Harthope

Height: 626m / 2,054ft (highest road)

From the rugged Weardale-bottom village of St John’s Chapel, a road lumbers right back up and over to Teesdale again. It’s the main connection between these dales.

A sign at the bottom says ‘CYCLISTS: This route is liable to poor weather conditions at all times’.

They’re not joking. It’s a sunny August day, but there are malicious clouds and drizzle at the top, plainly visible on the ascent to the ridge in front of me.

It’s a bit of a haul, with some traffic, but a straightforward haul. Halfway up, the car behind me is rattling like a wheelie bin full of tinfoil trundling over cobbles.

It grinds to a halt, then reverses, freewheel, all the way back down. This is not the place for a mechanical.

A couple of hairpins and I’m at the distinct, exhilarating summit.

In France, they commemorate such things with a big sign – ‘Col de Harthope Sommet 626m’, plus congratulatory graffiti, ‘Allez! Bravo! Bières à la fin Robi!’, or such.

In England, we say things such as ‘Cattle Grid’ and ‘Beware of Adders’.

It’s England’s highest road, 626m up. Forget any GPS figures you’ve seen confidently quoted online. Ignore what your Garmin tells you.

Their algorithms make guesses, they’re inconsistent, they misread, they don’t know exactly where sea level is (it’s in a shed in Newlyn, in Cornwall).

For elevation figures, trust the Ordnance Survey, an unbiased OS spokesperson assures me.

Traditional fieldwork by teams hiking between triangulation points has measured and cross-checked the spot-heights you see on OS maps, and they are the only reliable data for altitude.

So here I am, the nation’s top road cyclist, for now anyway. I celebrate with a pasty and a swig of water, and take in the lordly views. I can see Great Dun Fell to my right.

Two cars stop; the drivers chat to each other through wound-down windows about the wonderful scenery, but stay inside to view it.

I finish up my pasty, and like a kayaker in rapids, I shoot the expansive, rolling felltops back down to Teesdale.

Summit C: Grasshill Causeway at Coldberry End

Height: 674m / 2,211ft (highest unpaved road)

I included this crossing to make the route work, by making the traverses connect start to finish.

As I was planning the ride, I was put in mind of the great mathematician Euler, who solved a similar problem crossing bridges in Königsberg in 1736. In doing so, he invented the new field of topology.

He’d have been great at planning bike rides.

There are higher ‘cyclable’ bridleways than this (such as the one up Helvellyn in the Lakes, 950m / 3,117ft).

But this is the highest unpaved public motorable road in England: one of those stony, mud-brown ‘green lanes’ trashed by adventure drivers.

Access from the B6277 is low-key, and could be easily missed, looking more like a gated grouse-shooting track than a highway.

My steel tourer is robust, but the first bit of this track is like trying to cycle Chesil Beach, and a full-suspension mountain bike would be more appropriate. I give up and push a rocky mile up to the summit.

The wind whips my curses back to Bishop Auckland. Back down to Weardale, the track becomes broken tarmac, then smoother curse-free tarmac, and I glide down past a reservoir to the valley-bottom A689.

Summit D: A689 at Killhope Cross

Height: 623m / 2,044ft (2nd highest road)

Guinness used to list this as England’s highest road, but it’s only the runner-up. An A-road it may be, but it’s quiet.

The approach to the inevitable cattle grid at the top, an inviting sashay up the valley head, rakes up in front of me.

Behind me, an aftermath landscape is scarred by historical lead mining.

There’s a museum of it, with hard-hatted visitors outside and a tour guide pointing at things.

The top really feels like a top. And yes, there’s a small stone cross, possibly ancient, possibly just weathered. The sunny new view down to the dale in front of me opens out suddenly and cinematically.

I can see why Guinness thought this was the highest road. It looks and feels like it.

Summit E: NCN7 at Black Hill

Height: 609m / 1,998ft (joint 3rd highest road)

Close by, down a short drop then up a short climb, is the highest point on the Coast to Coast route, perched above the village of Nenthead.

There’s an interesting range of scenery here and some enticing roads that bound over the hills into the distance.

I stop to chat to some weary but happy C2Cers: chirpy, laughing mature women from Essex, taking apex selfies. Their smiles say: 'Tough, this? We’ve been round the block – jobs, marriages, kids, caring for elderly relatives. We can handle this'.

An irritatingly stony farm track plunges me down to Nenthead. At the small but vital cycle shop, North Pennine Cycles, wizardly owner David is multi-tasking three cyclists each wanting different, significant, instant repairs.

One, it turns out, is the Guinness record holder for altitude in 48 hours – name of Alan Colville.

David finds time to banter with me about my trip, and we all swap opinions on highest tops, highest-feeling, highest-challenging, etc.

He even has a list of summits with its own data, but it’s a bit out of date: 1920.

David says my route reminds him of the great mathematician Euler, and the Königsberg Bridge Problem of 1736. Great minds…

Summit F: Dowgang Hush at Nunnery Hill

Height: 599m / 1,965 ft (5th highest road)

The climb out of Nenthead is a 1 in 4 leg-buster, but thanks to my tourer’s ultra-low gearing (22 front! 36 rear! mwahaha!) it’s not a problem, even loaded with picnic stuff from Nenthead’s friendly village shop.

There’s another theatrical reveal at the top as I crest yet again, and plummet down to the large, open dale of the South Tyne.

There are more C2Cers at the bottom, who plead with me to confirm there’s not much more climbing.

I fudge my answer. More fudge than a visit to a fudge shop by someone who loves fudge. With a voucher for free fudge.

Summit G: B6277 at Yad Moss

Height: 598m / 1,962ft (6th highest road)

And, finally. A gradual climb up past Tynehead (yes, Tyne, as in Newcastle) and a zig-zag up to the last top.

It’s the most anticlimactic of the lot: no summit feel, just a large dull expanse of moor.

Yad Moss, the notional vertex here, is a notorious element of London-Edinburgh-London and other endurance routes.

Especially if they slog through this in the dark. They’re not missing much though. There’s little to see except the inevitable Great Dun Fell golfball over there, like a Ventoux tribute act.

I wander round trying to the find the true pinnacle, for completeness' sake. It seems to be a scruffy milestone.

My downhill doesn’t materialise for a mile or two, after some forgettable flat road.

At last, the road deigns to descend, and I can freewheel easily – with traffic almost totally absent – back to Langdon Beck.

I celebrate at the pub with a pint of Allendale Waymarker, which seems appropriate. I toast Euler and head back to the hostel. I’m done. I’m happy.

Looking back

This is a super route, with sweeping views all the way, very few car, and a real edge-of-civilisation feel. Unlike, say, Devon or Cornwall, there’s no needless climbing: it’s all height in the bank, soon cashed in as downhill.

These seven summits were less strenuous than I expected. Fun, indeed.

The road summits each have their own character. Yad Moss (#6) is the most humdrum, bleakest.

Dowgang Hush (#5) is the most intense. Black Hill (#3=) is the most awesome and varied. Newbiggin–Westgate (#3=) is the most Yorkshire-Dales-like. The A689 (#2) is the most continental feeling.

And the top of the lot, Chapel Fell (#1), is probably the most satisfying.

It has challenge and reward, space and views, freewheeling joy – plus a drink and rest immediately on completion at Langdon Beck’s pub and hostel.

Is this six-summit special England’s top ride? It’s up there. And not just in height terms, important though height is. Cheers, dad, I feel 10 feet tall.