We’ve all got our dream list of climbs. Alpe d’Huez, Mont Ventoux, Sa Calobra – the roads you’ve seen on TV, the ones you imagine yourself grinding up in some half-remembered version of the Tour. But what happens when you look not at the legends, but at the data?

To celebrate the launch of our newest batch of Climb Profiles tees we did a little Strava-digging - and the results might surprise you. We looked at the numbers two ways:

1. The total number of attempts.
   
2. The number of individual riders who’ve tackled them.

Box Hill: the World Champion of Attempts

By far the most-ridden climb we could find is… Box Hill in the Surrey Hills, south of London. Not Ventoux, not Alpe d’Huez – Box Hill.

It’s a UK classic: two neat hairpins, a vaguely alpine feel, but most importantly it’s within striking distance of London. For the city’s huge cycling community, riding out to the Surrey Hills and smashing up Box Hill has become a weekend ritual.

On Strava, Box Hill has racked up close to 1.5 million attempts. Nothing else we found comes close. It’s the only climb with over a million logged rides. By our reckoning, that makes it the most popular climb on the planet.

Bucket-List Climbs: Big Numbers, One-Time Riders

But there’s another story in the data. When we switch the lens to the number of unique riders, the picture changes.

Box Hill may have millions of rides, but many of those are the same riders going back week after week. On the big bucket-list climbs – Alpe d’Huez, Mont Ventoux – the opposite is true. Nearly 190,000 riders have logged Ventoux, and around the same number have taken on Alpe d’Huez. Most of them look to have done it once. Maybe because it’s too hard, maybe because you only get one shot on that trip to the Alps.

Mallorca Takes the Crown

Look closer and another favourite emerges: Cap de Formentor in Mallorca. The lighthouse road at the island’s northern tip is a rite of passage for anyone visiting. According to Strava, it’s had 192,000 riders take it on – more than anywhere else.

Sa Calobra isn’t far behind.

So while Box Hill wins for sheer volume, Mallorca’s climbs – and the French icons – lead when you count the number of unique riders.

Other Surprises

The data also shines a light on some less obvious contenders. The Col de Rates in Spain has over 400,000 attempts, thanks to its popularity with training camps. The Koppenberg, short but savage and sitting in the middle of Flanders cycling heartland, is one of the most-ridden cobbled climbs in the world.

What It Tells Us

Some climbs earn their status by sheer accessibility – close to big cities, easy to repeat. Others live off legend – the climbs you ride once, tick off, and tell stories about for years.

Box Hill may never feature in the Tour de France, but in terms of rides logged, it’s the undisputed champion. Meanwhile, the great European icons – from Alpe d’Huez to Formentor – remain the bucket-list tests we all dream of.

Check out the full data:

Check out the Climb Profiles collection here