Held up at work due to random IT nonsense and ended up riding home MUCH later than planned.
My ride home is 5 miles of steep sided Devon lanes through some very hilly and quite remote countryside. Tonight was pitch black, thick Dartmoor fog, crap commuter lights, barely 3m visibility. Lots of animal noises and the fog was doing really odd stuff with my sense of hearing and direction.....actually lost the road at a couple of points....
Done loads of solo night rides before, have lived and ridden in the countryside for most of my life but genuinely spooked and can't ever remember being so glad to see the lights of home!
Am I getting old / pathetic?
I would of got a lift if possible. Not worth it. Failing that allways carry a decent set of lights. But it is very foggy out there.
nah I still get it occasionally solo night rides. Once you start looking behind you just cant stop. It is odd when it happens and you not is not real but you are still on edge
Thick fog really brings home how little of familiar immediate surroundings you actually take notice of, and how important distant points of reference really are. It does freak you out.
Fog. Night. Devon.
Hound of the Baskervilles.
Absolutely - it was really hard to work out where I was. There's about 3 houses on the whole route so no ambient light whatsovever.
There's one particularly steep hill on the way back.... it's a b***er at the best of times but it seemed to go on forever and had no reference points to work out how far I had to go. Felt like my heart was going to exit via my mouth by the time I got to the top.
Oh and a sheep ran out in front of me at one point... one of them Jacob jobbies with the mad horns.
That was no sheep, it was beelzebub incarnate, goood job you rode fast 😉
I didn't - that was part of the problem. Have only just started commuting again and was barely making walking pace up some of the hills... "it" could easily catch me up.
it didn't want to catch you, just follow you home.
No, it sounds like you have recently read the big cat thread and its still lurking in the back of your mind?!
I read it the other day and on wed night's ride I had a moment when I stopped to sort my music out. It wasn't a problem in the past but the thread did not help one bit lol.
Last nights ride I had a moment going through a part of a wood just south of Inverness that I have heard a fox barking close by a few months ago and at the same place last night I had a thought of a big cat rugby tackling me from behind. The thought of it with the lights still on the bike and not having any vision started to play with my mind.
What I have learnt is that I need to stop reading bike forums and get out more in the middle of nowhere in deep dark forests. :O/
one of them Jacob jobbies with the mad horns.
Perhaps best not to think about it. You don't want to freak yourself out for your next ride home. In the dark.
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Riding with the devil on your back. That's what I used to call it back in my 50cc motorbike days coming back from mates houses across the countryside. Scary stuff..