There are two basic kinds of hills, short and sharp (say, under 1km) and longer steadier gradients. Of course long and steep can happen as well!
But, on short sharp ones a slightly higer gear and out of the saddle may be best, depending on how fast you want to go, longer ones sit in the saddle and turn at a good cadence using an appropriate gear and changing when you need to maintain the cadence. Leaving it on one gear can be a painful mistake.
All that said, if the steep hill in RP is a problem, start steady on a lowish gear, settle into a cadence, and change gear to maintain it. Little tip, once over the creat, keep the cadence going and change into higher gears, push even harder. This will hurt but the speed will come up almost immediately and allow you to settle into a decent pace which helps recovery from the effort.
Everyone is right, climbing brings fitness up fast, as does interval training. Long steady rides are teaching your body to sit on the bike for extended periods and burn fuel efficiently.
Pro training is long rides (5 hours or more) with periods of intense effort, either climbing hard or some intervals to work on fitness as well as stamina and conditioning. And not too much food to encourage weight loss, something that will improve climbing more than anything alse. See Messrs Wiggins and Froome as good examples of the extreme end of this.
and of course it is getting dark earlier now as well which is a pain, but if you consider I had only done 898 miles for the rest of the year up to the beginning of july it isn't too bad.
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