Rapha Tourmalet Jersey: That's the spirit

There is a bigger hill in Essex than Essex way, and that is on the A414 between Chelmsford and Maldon. It's a real energy sapper of a climb, that seems to go on for miles, every twist in the road presernting another extension to the burn.

We discovered it on our 56-mile excursion on Sunday morning out to Great Baddow and back through South Woodham Ferrers, Battlesbridge, Ashingdon, Rochford and all the villages in between before the regulation return along the seafront.

Maybe I would have found that hill easier in the Rapha Tourmalet Jersey. The latest release by Rapha commemorates the centenary of the first time the Tour de France travelled over the Col du Tourmalet - the highest mountain in the Pyrenees - on July 21 1910.

I would like to think the jersey would have imbibed me with the spirit of those early Tour pioneers, complete two-wheeled lunatics that they were.

It probably wouldn't have to be honest, but I would have tackled that ascent with a nice looking jersey on all the same.

Read the full Tourmalet 1910 feature here and then go and find yourself a mountain.

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