MINEHEAD Cycling Club have announced they have been awarded the 2026 National Hillclimb Championships to be run on the Porlock Tollroad.

Organiser Louise Crossman said: “We have successfully run our Porlock Hillclimbs for ten years now and to be asked to run the National Championships in 2026 is a great reward for a huge team effort over those years. We kept going right throughout the Covid years, luckily finding ourselves avoiding the periods of lockdown.

“ It was really important to have a healthy outdoor activity that people could turn to, if sprinting up Porlock Hill counts as that! We will be running our usual “double header” on the Main Road and the Tollroad on September 20, 2026, and then the National Championships on October 25 .

“We have chosen the longer but less steep Tollroad rather than the formidable Main Road so that it is more inclusive to all shapes and sizes of cyclist. It’s all very well catering for the Elite men and women, but we want to make the event more accessible for juniors and disabled riders.”

Club chairman Stephen Crossman said: “MCC may only be a small club but it does great things! Older locals will remember the Town Centre races in the 1980s, which were a template for the revival in 2018/9. The earlier one was won by a youth rider who went on to ride the Tour de France three times, the latter by another youth rider who is now a multiple World Champion. It’s important that clubs like ours put on events so that there is not just activity for us ordinary riders, but a stepping stone for ambitious athletes towards the world stage.

“The National Hillclimb Championships are the biggest one day cycling event in the UK; we hope the whole community will support us in showing off West Somerset to the nation”.