You’ve waited a while for a downhill stage, and finally you’re getting one, but not before you’ve finished the climb that started on the slopes leading to the finish of Stage 261 first. The climb to the finish was three miles long and the rollout of this stage climbs for another miles to over three thousand eight hundred feet, the highest elevation for a while.
The railway line is notable for its absence on this stage, preferring instead to hold a line a few miles to the north east in order to avoid the worst of the gradient. What that leaves for the road is a meandering climb up to three miles that’s followed by an equally meandering and lumpy decent down to ten miles: and that’s not even the low point of the stage because although the route rises back up by a hundred feet between miles ten and thirteen, the descent gathers pace again after that and the route actually troughs out at three thousand two hundred feet at twenty one miles: that’s a full six hundred feet of elevation cast off in eighteen miles.
However in terms of descending, I’m afraid that’s it for the stage because the final three miles are a lumpy uphill flat round a left hander that that leads into the finishing straight at the junction to Shireet up north.
Distance: 24 miles / 38 kilometres
Ascent: 502 feet / 153 metres
RGT Magic Road: CjVwGxJvukwQ
Max elevation: 3821 ft
Min elevation: 3227 ft
Total climbing: 502 ft
Total descent: -842 ft
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