Night rides in the woods – sh1tting oneself

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I really do love riding in the dark, rabbits darting in front of you, owls in the distant. As others have said we are the freaks in the woods.

Was out tonight and went past some guy walking his dog. He put his arm out as if my light was a million suns, I wondered what he thought of me almost all the ride.

I do like it when you meet some other night-activity-doer (doggers and murderers aside) and you can tell you’re both thinking “that guy’s mental”. The hill runners especially but sometimes I’ve come across groups of OAPs equipped with torches, hopefully not dogging, and they’re always amazed to see anyone else 😆

Thanks Darren

Just as darkness set in a forest, 15kms from anywhere on a snowy fire road and a speck in the distance gets bigger and bigger. Turns out it was a xc skier. He had the cheek to call me a mentalist until I pointed out that I actually had lights. He made it back I checked his tracks the next day. Never met anyone else out apart from other bikers and doggers.

It’s the thing keeping pace with you, that you can just see out of the corner of your eye. That and the sound of it breathing. Made all the more scary when it swaps sides.

You could do what I always used to do as a child (okay, young teenager) when left alone in the house at night, and give a loud commentary about what you’re doing whenever you’re a bit scared, in the hope that it would discourage any baddies.

OKAY, JUST FINISHED A CAN OF FANTA, COMING UPSTAIRS FOR A PISS NOW. THEN I’LL BE WATCHING THE WORD. THAT’S ON CHANNEL FOUR. I’VE GOT SOME BISCUITS AND I MIGHT HAVE A COUPLE OF THEM.

The way I see it is that I can outrun anyone downhill and even when going uphill I only need turn around to make my escape.

Doesn’t work when someone comes out of the bushes behind you on a long uphill drag, that’s how I usually do it.

I’ve never met anyone out on a nightride, but i do have 300 square miles of Galloway forest park/dark sky park to play in and whilst i can ride all day without seeing a single soul at night it’s even better, the sense of total isolation is fantastic.

Doesn’t even need to be dark. Once got a bad case of the Heebie Jeebies at dusk in the bottom of a coombe on the Quantocks. Stopped to catch my breath and realised there were about 30 deer around me up both sides of the coombe. They were just staring at me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_big_cats

I guarantee this is all you will be thinking about on your next night ride now.

Mwhahahahaha

Stopped to catch my breath and realised there were about 30 deer around me up both sides of the coombe. They were just staring at me

Dearhunter moment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_big_cats

I guarantee this is all you will be thinking about on your next night ride now.

Mwhahahahaha

As kids we used to fantasise about trapping them, we lived in darkest Argyll and there were quite few very reputable sightings around our village of Dalavich on the shores of Loch Awe – pretty much all our fathers worked in the forestry (tree cutting) and every single person took their dogs to work with them. Once my mother spotted a cat stalking the sheep on the hillside in front of the village houses and as we were up in the forest above the hillside on our bikes the whole village was alerted to come and find us, another time we were coming home from Oban high school (80 min journey-yawn) and one ran up the road in front of the bus – we all saw it – no mistake whatsoever as to what it was as it ran right up the road in front of us for a few hundred yards, 25 yrs later i i can still remember the bounce of it’s tail and the way it seemed to glide as it ran.

Needless to say it was all a big adventure to us and we used to go hunting them for days at a time with our airguns and tents throughout the area and up to Loch Avich and beyond on our bikes – gawd knows what we would have done if we had cornered one or it had cornered us – prob shit ourself and cried for mammy 😀

Needless to say it was all a big adventure to us and we used to go hunting them for days at a time with our airguns and tents throughout the area and up to Loch Avich and beyond on our bikes – gawd knows what we would have done if we had cornered one or it had cornered us – prob shit ourself and cried for mammy

Airguns? You bloody mentalists…..

My old man swears blind he saw one jump out of a hedge in front of his car then up onto a 10 foot high wall.

The spookiest thing I’ve seen was a **** locally known escaped eagle owl in the dusk, funnily enough out hunting with airguns as a teen. And no, we didn’t shoot it, more like stood there slack jawed at the sheer size of it.

My night ride bike is my stealth bike. I like creeping up on the night time dog walkers with their tiny torches and freaking them out 😀

I like eerie rides, though it’s freaky when you see dozens of glowing eyes staring at you (that turn out to be deer).

Generally not bothered at night. Though I’m wary of riding the canal past some dodgy areas where there are often reports of muggings.

I was fearless as I was armed with my Weihrauch HW85 air gun and my Wembley tempest pistol, I was quite a decent shot but I imagine I’d have done more harm if I threw the guns at any possible big cat rather than merely piss it off with a slug to the arse 😀 , Neil (Munro-a mate) used to take one of his dad’s shotguns or sometimes his rifle if he could find the cabinet keys so I guess we would be considered armed and dangerous by today’s standards, back then nobody really raised an eyebrow – we were hicks in the sticks basically.

Needless to say we never had a sighting, nae surprise as we were 13/14 at the time and I imagine our stealth tracking abilities were severely lacking..bloody good fun though

Just wait until your first puncture, it’ll happen in the deepest part of the woods on the darkest night. You’ll soon realise as you stop to fix it how loud the noises are now the row from your bike has stopped & how much of a beacon your light is

I tend to shout really loudly
there are ten of us,
even though there is only one set of lights

mind you the hornets banging against my helmet make me cycle a lot quicker!

Quite a few Cougars (Mountain Lions) on the trails in Squamish BC these days. I’ve never seen one but the conservation guys say you won’t unless they’re not bothered enough about you to let you see them.

However, there’s enough of them that one or two will see you if you’re on a big ride. Not too bad on the bike as you look rather big/odd but they’ve stalked people on foot.

Northwind’s first post
PMSL.

Why is it that nervous people always imagine that danger lurks in the woods? If I was a mad axe murderer I don’t think I’d hang around in the local woods; it would be boring and there would be very little chance of spotting or catching a victim. Round the back of the shops or down an alley would be the most productive place, then chop chop, nice quick murder and back home for a can of Special Brew and Jeremy Kyle on TV.

Danger lurking in the woods is a primeval fear that we have inherited from our ancestors, the same as the fear of swimming in deep dark water where you can’t see the bottom. That’s why we like open savanna landscapes (as reproduced by Capability Brown) and nice clean swimming pools or coral beaches where we can keep an eye on what’s sneaking up on us.

Have done so much solitary night riding and camping/sleeping in caves overnight that tbh I rarely get the poops unless it’s imminent hassle from murderous thugs wielding tiny IQs and a tinny or ten. But sometimes the heart rate increases, a thrill from the feeling of being alone in the dark seems to depend on where and when. This I find interesting.

For instance, there is something totally primal and awe inspiring being in dark woods on a still night. One is hyper alert, and the sudden tawny “KYoooOOOoo-WIKK!!” makes you jump out of your shoes, yet I love being in still woods at night time, it feels awesome and in the moment, not so spooky unless you see a knave up to no good or something inexplicable/unfamiliar.

I find it creepier when it’s windy. Riding through woods even in the daytime is creepy in moderate to high winds. Only in the woods mind you. Windy woods at night time my legs are a blur. Reminds me of that short story by Algernon Blackwood – ‘The Willows’. When there is a tempest of rustling and whooshing it feels to me as if something is being hidden from my senses by the cacophony. Something watching. 😯

A few places I’ve found inexplicably creepy at night/dusk (thinking about it, two I can put down to rushing water, always a bit creepy at night I think for same reasons as wind ie senses muffled)

Hafren Forest, nr Strata Florida, (brrrr!)
Long Mynd (Pole Cottage)
Cader Idris (climb up through trees to Llyn Cau)
Dunkery Beacon
Brithdir (torrent walk)

guess you haven’t bumped into the huskies in great woods yet…

I got used to solo night riding years ago – especially after Nobby Jr was born – however, a couple of years back I was dive-bombed by a pterodactyl whilst riding alongside a local river & that freaked me out a bit.

It took a good while for me to realise it was actually a gert big heron that I’d disturbed but in the pitch black, when underlit by a bright LED, it certainly looked Jurassic enough. 😳

Nope totally non-scary. Cannock last night actually quite pleasant like a normal day only dark

The worst thing (for me) is hearing animals getting killed by other animals. They really scream. Horrible. Puts a damper on an otherwise excellent night ride.

Why is it that nervous people always imagine that danger lurks in the woods?

You’ve partially answered your own question, I think. Seems to me that our minds are hard-coded into amplifying potential threats (animal instinct) and such threats are much higher under cover of woodland and darkness. Couple this with cultural imprinting from over a century popular horror fiction and film and a normally ‘nervous person’ can become mentally unstuck. In the woods. In the dark. In the night… 😈

I don’t find night riding (which I generally do alone) the least bit scary. On a starry night I like to stop and switch all my lights off and soak up the stillness for a bit. The wildlife you see is a bonus, especially seeing barn owls, deer, and the odd badger. The closest I have come to being ‘scared’ was when a bat flew into my face when I was going down a towpath at dusk, I saw this perfect bat outline before the ‘clunk’ into my glasses/helmet. Poor bugger. The scary bit was I nearly went in the canal!

I’m not easily spooked and quite regularly commute home off road, on my own.

That was until last Wednesday. My commute brings me out of Brighton and I try to pick a route up and over the South Downs. I find the A23 in rush hour more frightening than any ghoul.

I was plugging through a farmers field – bridleway right through the middle. All of a sudden hundreds of birds took off from all around me (I guess the lights spooked them)….. It was like the scene of a Hitchcock film. Thankfully they seemed to be pigeons. Less sinister than crows.

I chuckled to myself that it had made me jump and continue on my journey. The mist was rolling at this point and full beam light was not much use.

got to the top – on the SDW heading towards Ditchling Beacon and, out of nowhere, some geezer appears – I say “appears”….he didn’t have a torch or anything – revving a chainsaw. Alone. Not near any trees. Not saying anything.

Now – I’m sure there was a logical explanation but I certainly didn’t hang around to find out what it may have been. My Strava trace shows a very quick U Turn and my PB time back from whence I came.

I have to say that in a good few years night riding, it’s the one incident that has led to minor “soilage”

I don’t find night riding that scary as I tend to go with a group of incredibly tall Viking descendents (Swedes) so should probably be more afraid of them. However the journey home when you can hear the Wolves is always a little edgy. I also love that anyone who does see you thinks that you are utterly bonkers

Worse I find is Solo wild camping. The likelihood is of course that there is no murderer intent on teasing your intestines out with a knitting needle, but if there was…. you are alone…

Night riding is awesome. 😀
I work shifts and commute mostly off road by bike, so I ride in the dark almost every day.
As others have said, urban areas are far more of a real, rather than perceived, risk than the wilderness.

The only time I have been genuinely concerned was when I came across a recently fallen tree in the tow path on my way to work, which needed a dismount and crawl under.
It was still there on the way home in the dark, except that there were two guys standing right by it.
I immediately thought ambush and bikejacking, but all I got was a slurred “Awright mate?”

Another time, I was riding on the footpath alongside the Severn, when I saw a light on the water.
Thinking to myself, “Who’s that maniac kayaking at 1 o’clock in the morning?” I then started laughing as they were probably thinking “Who’s that maniac mountain biking at 1 o’clock in the morning?”

Wasn’t this dude was it, McC?

I enjoy night riding and tend to go out on my own about once a week. The axe murderers, ghosts and angry wildlife don’t bother me but I do have a fear of either crashing and not being able to explain to people where I am or have a mechanical that I cant fix and then my lights running out of battery so I am stranded in the dark and cold.

I know in reality that I have just as much chance of crashing during the day and apps like echo 112 will help people locate me (if there is signal which there often isn’t) if I am upside down in a ditch but I still spend a lot of time thinking about it when out on my own.

Actually…this guy Stevied

Recently moved house and prior to this most of my night riding was on Cannock Chase, which was never quiet what with deer, doggers, pig man, cucumber activities, werewolfs, single speeders and the girl with no eyes.

In comparison the Clent Hills were utterly deserted and peaceful even at 6pm. Will give the Lickey Hills a go this week.

Chainsaw man 😯

Seriously, what was he doing?

I’ve come across groups of OAPs equipped with torches, hopefully not dogging, and they’re always amazed to see anyone else

They were dogging.

You lot need to MTFU :lol:, my nearly 3 year old loves night riding.
I take him over the pitch black fields and woods where we look for owls, that we can hear making a racket most nights..
He’s not even spooked by the cows/sheep’s eyes glowing in the dark..

I remember being out in Abernethy Forest on the edge of the Cairngorms in the dark. Unbelievably spooky, eyes reflecting your lights, eyes of different colours, watching you from all directions. Low to the ground, shoulder height up in the trees. One minute they were there, next they were gone,, all without a sound being made. Very creepy no matter how much I tried to convince myself that I could explain it all logically.

This may not help your fears…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HTaUluurZ0 Two years ago, did this on a bunch of friends – watch the end a few times: Never did I hear someone scream in such fear!ha ha. But of course, I got a punch in the face from one fella and couldnt see it coming through the mask!!totally worth a black eye though

I love solo night riding, especially under a full moon with the lights off. Last time I passed some hippies having a toke in an old cave who would never have seen me.
My spookiest night would have been at the Port Arthur backpackers hostel after doing the nightly ghost tour on a dark & stormy night. I was the only one there & even the owner had gone away. There’s a lot of bad vibes down there.

Biggest fright I’ve had was riding up the road to Suadarlan bothy in the dark before head torches were in common use. Two deer suddenly burst out of the bushes beside the road and charged off; my brother and I nearly pooped ourselves.

On another occasion sleeping in Ben Alder bothy I awoke with a strong conviction that soemone was watching me through the window. It took me a fair bit of time to rationalise that one away and get back to what passes for sleep on a camping mat on a cold concrete platform.