Twenty per cent is steep.

This isn’t a complaint to the Chancellor about VAT, but a comment on one of the more brutal climbs on my regular loop: a monster that’s a thrill to descend, but offers a rather less enjoyable climb.

The approach is rolling and the road surface ‘draggy’. The combined effect is to slow progress and deplete energy reserves before the climb begins; an inauspicious start.

The road narrows as it rises and is overhung with trees on either side, creating the impression of an even steeper gradient than the already vertiginous ramp beneath the wheels.

This is inner ring territory, the ascent begun in the middle of the block before shifting steadily downwards. Hands on the tops of the bars, perched on the nose of the saddle, weight shifted forwards, the early stages of the climb are best tackled in a seated position.

Two-thirds of the way up, the road rises cruelly, forcing a shift to first gear (no point holding anything in reserve – this is a hard as it gets) and a move out of the saddle.

Realising I’m hunched over the bars, I visualize Contador, and force myself in to a more upright position and an attempt to ‘dance’ on the pedals.

Suddenly, the climb plateaus and I return to the saddle, click up a gear, and crest the summit with an enormous sense of satisfaction.

The view is an additional reward: a seemingly endless vista of unspoilt countryside overhung by an enormous sky of pure blue.

What goes up most come down, and the following descent is thrilling, a dead straight opening section heading into a sudden, sharp, right hand hair pin.

I shift to the back of the saddle, position the left pedal at six o’clock, press my left leg against the frame, left knee locked out, right knee pointing at the apex, rims aglow.

An edge is placed on the sixteen degree temperature and brilliant sunshine by a chilly breeze manifested as a headwind for almost the entire ride and I’m glad of the Castelli Compato gillet, a garment whose red and white ‘wind stopper’ logo in the Hexagonal shape of a traffic stop sign proves accurate.

Elsewhere, I’m clad in Vermarc’s Flanders kit (shorts, short sleeve, full-zip jersey, Roubaix-lined arm and knee warmers), with an ageing but still effective Endura FS260 base layer, polyester and adequate to today’s task.

The bike? Condor’s Super Acciaio, a machine I should have returned by now, but which I’ve fallen in love with, and which suits my needs perfectly: all the comfort of steel with a responsive race-oriented geometry to keep things interesting.

Weather forecasts predict more rain, but it feels like a corner has been turned, and cycling in the sunshine is a simple pleasure that renders the headwind largely immaterial.