20% hill

Change to hill gear ratios and also ride with a knee support- practise on easy hills and increase difficulty with time.

Electric motor in your seat tube hooked to the cranks?

you could fit SRAM apex to yr road bike, that has a 34t chainring and 32t cassette

how about a stairlift?

only joking

was the cliff there when you moved in?

If you have storage at the top of the hill why don't you just walk up the hill, grab the bike and go for a ride? You could even drive up to the storage and go for a ride or one of those mini mopeds to get you there!

what gearing are you running on your competition bike? can you gear it down easily?

Have you considered EPO? Keep it quiet, and we won't grass Seriously, I really wouldn't sniff at looking into some electric assistance - Shimano's soon-to-be-launched STEPS for example. Fit it to your standard frame and you'll get a boost more than enough to take you to the top of your hill combined with a close to 'normal' riding experience on the flat. It even starts to recharge the battery when the brakes are applied or you go downhill - they don't come much 'greener' than this right now! They haven't yet announced what the system will cost, indeed it may prove cheaper to do what jimmythecuckoo suggests and move to the top of the hill - but where's the fun in that?

move to the top of the hill?

My charming wifes bike is a Dawes Super Galaxy
It has the lowest bottom gear in the known universe

Perhaps I exaggerate but I'm sure you would have no problems climbing up your hill cold on such a tiny micro gear

The small chainring is 26T and the big sprocket is 32T
This gives a gear of approx 21 inches

i'm assuming that's 800m of *riding* as opposed to 800m of *climbing* - that really would be a stern test

even so, it's no fun to hit a hill like that completely cold. my advice would be to gear down - right down, to something really low. fit a triple and a wide cassette, so you've got a tiny gear to twiddle up the first climb. You don't have to use it on the rest of the ride if you don't want to. if you gear low enough you can use the initial climb as a warm up rather than seeing it as a barrier to riding.

If you can't physically ride the first hill all the way to the top – even with a low gear – then don't. who cares? it's not about you versus anyone else, it's about you versus the hill. See how far you can make it, then that's your target for the next time. you can walk the rest. you'll be surprised just how quickly you'll be able to ride the whole thing.

some people might snigger at you for fitting a really low gear. my advice would be to tell those people to get bent.

Ducati make bikes worth getting out on too.