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UK Hill Climb Survey — road gradients measured by LiDAR

Every British road climb the open laser record can support, across all four UK nations — measured on the national 1 m LiDAR surveys and ranked by the steepest 25 m, part of the HowSteep survey. It is where this survey began, with one contradictory road sign in Wales. What the survey is, and how to read a gradient ladder →

See all the measured roads on one map →

3485 climbs published · 388 km of total ascent between them (a rough total — it adds every small rise in the unsmoothed 1 m profile, noise included) · steepest 25 m: 36.6% (Lane near Dolgarrog) · longest: 13.0 km (Garvald to Redstone Rig) · 72 counties · share the survey

Elevation: the national 1 m LiDAR composites for England and Wales, Scotland’s national programme where it has published so far, and Northern Ireland’s river-basin surveys — all under the Open Government Licence v3. Roads: OpenStreetMap geometry, with every route line snapped to and audited against the Ordnance Survey road-network centreline. Scope: paved public roads — Britain publishes no national road-surface register, so UK rows carry no surface chip; unpaved tracks are not measured here.

Recognition sources used here: National Hill Climb Championship venues, the climbs of Simon Warren’s original 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs, and a small hand-picked founding set — those three open the fame door for a UK page. Mentions on other lists are noted on pages but don’t create a page by themselves.

What the open data supports

These tables publish exactly what the public laser record can prove — no estimates, no filler. Where a nation’s open coverage runs deep (Wales, England), so do the tables. Where it is still growing, we publish every climb the data already supports: Scotland’s open coverage is a patchwork today (its national LiDAR programme is capturing the whole country through 2027), and Northern Ireland’s published LiDAR reaches roughly a quarter of its roads — enough to measure Belfast’s steepest streets, not yet the Antrim coast’s famous climbs. A famous hill missing from these tables is almost always waiting for data, not judgement — the measured case for more open elevation data. The tables reflect sources and reviews as of 2 October 2026; nations are not all on the same vintage — this is a working survey, updated as and when (what changed).

On this page: steepest 10 m · 25 m · 50 m · 100 m · largest net rise · provisional (425) · all climbs (3485) — the rankings are the evidence-quality A/B subset; all climbs is every page, held-out entries included.

Steepest 10 m

≈ measured under tree canopy or near a structure at this window — the value stands but is less certain — the flag does not say whether the true value is higher or lower. Each climb page details what was flagged and why.

° provisional auto-generated name — details on the climb page.

Steepest 25 m

≈ measured under tree canopy or near a structure at this window — the value stands but is less certain — the flag does not say whether the true value is higher or lower. Each climb page details what was flagged and why.

° provisional auto-generated name — details on the climb page.

Steepest 50 m

≈ measured under tree canopy or near a structure at this window — the value stands but is less certain — the flag does not say whether the true value is higher or lower. Each climb page details what was flagged and why.

° provisional auto-generated name — details on the climb page.

Steepest 100 m

≈ measured under tree canopy or near a structure at this window — the value stands but is less certain — the flag does not say whether the true value is higher or lower. Each climb page details what was flagged and why.

° provisional auto-generated name — details on the climb page.

Largest net rise

° provisional auto-generated name — details on the climb page.

Net rise is the endpoint elevation difference (what overall gradient is computed from); total ascent counts every metre climbed, including dips regained — and, since it adds the small rises of an unsmoothed 1 m profile without ever subtracting, read it as indicative rather than surveyed (why). Rankings include evidence quality A and B only (what evidence quality is). Rankings order the computed estimates; differences smaller than the measurement uncertainty (about ±1.4 pp at 10 m, smaller at longer windows) should not be read as significant — neighbouring entries may genuinely be tied.

Provisional discoveries — awaiting review

These trip our own plausibility checks (evidence quality U — needs confirmation): the numbers below may be terrain-model artifacts and are NOT ranked until a human review — or your local knowledge — settles them. Steepest first at 10 m.

° provisional auto-generated name — details on the climb page.

…and 415 more in the catalogue below (filter: awaiting review).

Browse every climb

Real pages, not a hidden table: each link below is a page of its own with 200 climbs on it, and every one of the 3,485 published climbs appears on exactly one of them.

By County: Aberdeenshire 4 · Angus 1 · Argyll and Bute 13 · Berkshire 4 · Bristol 4 · Buckinghamshire 10 · Cheshire 22 · City of Edinburgh 1 · Clwyd 138 · Cornwall 316 · County Antrim 3 · County Down 1 · County Durham 21 · Cumbria 122 · Derbyshire 76 · Devon 704 · Dorset 34 · Dumfries and Galloway 14 · Dundee City 1 · Dyfed 335 · East Ayrshire 2 · East Dunbartonshire 2 · East Lothian 2 · East Sussex 11 · Essex 1 · Falkirk 1 · Fife 5 · Glasgow City 1 · Gloucestershire 120 · Greater London 4 · Gwent 55 · Gwynedd 147 · Hampshire 14 · Herefordshire 72 · Hertfordshire 3 · Highland 15 · Inverclyde 1 · Isle of Wight 2 · Kent 50 · Lancashire 69 · Leicestershire 5 · Lincolnshire 4 · Mid Glamorgan 49 · Moray 1 · Na h-Eileanan an Iar 4 · Norfolk 2 · North Ayrshire 12 · North Lanarkshire 1 · North Yorkshire 152 · Northumberland 26 · Nottinghamshire 2 · Oxfordshire 2 · Perth and Kinross 8 · Powys 166 · Renfrewshire 2 · Rutland 1 · Scottish Borders 5 · Shetland Islands 5 · Shropshire 93 · Somerset 194 · South Ayrshire 4 · South Glamorgan 1 · Staffordshire 36 · Stirling 1 · Suffolk 1 · Surrey 22 · Warwickshire 4 · West Glamorgan 33 · West Lothian 1 · West Sussex 11 · Wiltshire 26 · Worcestershire 24

Steepest first: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18   A–Z: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

All climbs (3,485)

Every climb with a page — a broader set than the ranking tables above, which admit evidence quality A and B only. Provisional and held-out entries appear here too, labelled, so the catalogue is the complete published record rather than another ranking.

All countiesClwydDyfedGwentGwyneddMid GlamorganPowysSouth GlamorganWest GlamorganBerkshireBristolBuckinghamshireCheshireCornwallCounty DurhamCumbriaDerbyshireDevonDorsetEast SussexEssexGloucestershireGreater LondonHampshireHerefordshireHertfordshireIsle of WightKentLancashireLeicestershireLincolnshireNorfolkNorth YorkshireNorthumberlandNottinghamshireOxfordshireRutlandShropshireSomersetStaffordshireSuffolkSurreyWarwickshireWest SussexWiltshireWorcestershireAberdeenshireAngusArgyll and ButeCity of EdinburghDumfries and GallowayDundee CityEast AyrshireEast DunbartonshireEast LothianFalkirkFifeGlasgow CityHighlandInverclydeMorayNa h-Eileanan an IarNorth AyrshireNorth LanarkshirePerth and KinrossRenfrewshireScottish BordersShetland IslandsSouth AyrshireStirlingWest LothianCounty AntrimCounty Down All matchesMatched to a listSign or tag on the roadNot yet matched All shapesSustainedSteppedStinger Any evidence qualityHigh (A)Good — minor caveats (B)Needs confirmation (U) 50 rows100 rows250 rowsAll rows ←→ Download the dataset (CSV) ODbL 1.0 OCL format Share this view

° provisional name — auto-suggested from nearby map places, no local-usage evidence; renames welcome (each climb page has the details).

Sources: ¹ British National Hill Climb Championship · ² 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs (Simon Warren) · ³ Wikipedia · ⁴ Simon Warren 100 Climbs app (Wales collections) · ⁵ Another 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs (Simon Warren) · ⁶ diamond geezer, "London's steepest hills" (2017) · ⁷ Guinness World Records · ⁸ BikeRadar, "7 of the steepest UK climbs, ranked" · ⁹ Tour of Britain

Sources & credit

Elevation: 1 m LiDAR composites for England (Environment Agency) and Wales (Welsh Government / Natural Resources Wales), Scottish public-sector LiDAR (Scottish Government, SEPA and partners) and Northern Ireland river-basin LiDAR via OpenDataNI — all under the Open Government Licence v3; Crown copyright and database right. Road geometry: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), audited against the Ordnance Survey road-network centreline. Recognition: National Hill Climb Championship venues and Simon Warren’s 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs — membership facts only, never their measurements. Updated 2 October 2026 — what changed. Full terms: licensing & reuse.