When Christian Turner told his cycling teammates he was planning on scaling the equivalent of Everest in one day – on a “peak” just south of Meopham – they thought he was joking.

In fact the cyclist had been carrying out intensive research into the challenge of Everesting and picked Vigo Hill on the North Downs as the location of his ascent – an easier route than Everest itself perhaps, but a well known “absolute pig of a climb” with a top gradient of 25%.

Now Christian, 29, can count himself among a select group of cyclists to have scaled the height of the world’s highest mountain on a bike, having successfully ridden the equivalent up Vigo Hill’s 130-metre road-climb 69 times in just under 20 hours.

While the road up Vigo Hill provides an easier cycling surface and a fair bit more oxygen than a Himalayan snowface, Christian said it had its own challenges. To reach the equivalent altitude, he obviously couldn’t cycle vertically, and following the road took him over a distance of 147 miles.

He and his teammates from the Peninsula Pirates (PRTZ) cycle club had to spend the first hour of the day clearing stones and flint that had been washed onto the road overnight by a storm.

They sustained more than 15 punctures over the course of the day but battled on, as friends and family gathered at the nearby George pub to offer support.

“It started really badly and when everyone started turning up I was only on five repetitions,” he said. “I was supposed to be on 15 and it wasn’t going to plan, but then the weather sorted itself out.”

Having started at 6.50am, the challenge ended at 2.50am the next day with Christian
having climbed a total of
8,973 metres – 125 metres higher than Everest’s 8,848m altitude.

“I thought I was going to struggle a little bit but I paced myself and when I got to 50 reps I thought I was nearly there.

“You think ‘you’ve come this far so you can finish’. If legs go to sleep they go to sleep, but luckily they didn’t.

“It was as much of a mental challenge as a physical challenge. It would have got boring but luckily I had a team that stayed all night.”

Among them was Glenn Cook, whose 23 reps of the hill would have got him to twice the height of Ben Nevis, or to the top of a decent sized peak in the Pyrenees.

“They all battled through, and they all did a lot of reps,” said Christian, who works by day as a boatman on the Thames and is from St Mary Hoo, Rochester.

“I was pleased to finish and pleased to put the bike down.”

Although he is relatively new to serious cycling, Christian has already racked up some big achievements, having cycled the 315-mile Newcastle to London 24-hour challenge last year with the PRTZ team, and coming third in the Hollingbourne Hill race in October.

The Everesting challenge also raised more than £150 for the pub zoo at the Fenn Bell Inn in St Mary Hoo.