The deer thread got me thinking of a solo night ride a while back.

Blasting down some singletrack i spotted soemthing white at about eye level about 3/4 mile away (love the new lights). Presumed some kind of sign/marker post from the FC people.

About 3 miles later i come up to it round a blind bend (the track winds arround some woods). Its a Zombie costume stung up accross the path!

Well I hope it was, that much addrenalin/fear I wasnt hanging arround to investigate whether it was a real decaying corps curcified over the cheeky trail (millitant red socks?).

That is beyond horrible. I’m a bit scared just imagining that, and now I know for absolute sure I will never, ever go night riding on my own. I get jumpy even when I’m with someone, and now I have a visual of your strung up zombie imprinted in my mind 🙁 You could just tell me you made that up?

nope, 100% true

MTFU! (or WTFU) as applicable.

Reminds me of the time i got chased by wolves riding home about 3 am after a night out. And there was that other time with the monkeys (they were real though).

remember a night ride in the peaks on my own (stupid idea, darwin awards gladly accepted). Coming down beasts brother i spent the entire time convinced there were wolves after me, convinced i could se them in the corner of my lights. Turned out I was being followed! There was somethign in the edge of my lights, but just a sheepdog 🙁 no idea where its owners were and it ran back up when i got to the road.

Thats nothing.

Just the other night I awoke to a blood curdling cry. Cracking open one eye lid revealed nothing in the darkness, but the sound was unrelenting. I tried to close my senses to the terror just out of sight in the darkness. Like the lid of a coffin on an opened grave I heard the tell-tale creak of the bedroom door. The fear gripped me & I was unable to move. The creaking of the bedroom floor made certain of my fate as this thing of pure evil approached. The footsteps as the thing approached were like the chimes of death on my very own funeral procession. I counted down my last few moments before the axe wielding thing of evil unleashed his fury on my pathetic cowering form. I tensed, awaiting the first blow from the axe but it did not come. Instead it climbed onto the bed pinning me beneath the duvet. This was to be a slow death, it would carve me with its blood covered sabre. I could hear its deathly cries, feel its breath, I could sense that my time on this world was at its end as it peeled back the covers. At this point the blackness enveloped me once again & my suffering came to an end. It had overcome me & my fate lay in its hands.

The next morning I told him, in no uncertain words, that there was no such thing as monsters, & that he should stay in his own bed. I mean, he’s a big boy now, he’s 3 yrs old.

i got chased by wolves* riding on my at night on the quantocks once….

* it may have been the husky racers training at night….

I spent my one and only off road night ride (in the North Downs) convinced the creature from Alien was after me, it was the bloody fastest I had ever ridden for around two hours!

Bloody hell!! That would have scared the crap out of me, never am i going on a night ride on my own 😆

pah yah jessies! come on down to Wiltshire! there’s a breeding pair of Chupacabra’s which escaped from an estate collection, they inhabit those “woods behind nationwide”.

Flol at the thread title 🙂

The last time I went out night riding on my own I didn’t have the helmet light on, which meant that the edges of my comforting cone of light were populated by many ghosts and demons aka foxes, rabbits and barn owls…

yep, riding alone often means you don’t push yourself as hard as in a group or pair………not at night though……no way dude…….it’s the loiterers and the one’s at the back that they pick off first ya know!

ride alone at nihgt,and at some point your irrational fear of the dark, suppressed for many millennia will surface. Doubly so if you only use a bar mounted light.
I always leave a route map fpr te missus when night riding alone, so at least they should know where to start looking for a blood trail that’ll lead to teh remnants of my dismembered corpse!

Buddy of mine was out running on cannock chase one night and found a suicide case hanging from a tree. he thought it was a dummy at first, then inspected closer when he stopped for a breather, and realsied the truth!He doesn’t ride or run alone in the dark anymore! And he sure as shit doesn’t let himself get dropped on a night ride anymore!

Trackside repairs (punctures etc) while solo night riding really do get my senses going beserk, especially in woods where they invariably happen. Who’s that creeping up behind me etc. I’m trying not to imagine your chain picking that precise moment to snap (oh and perhaps a puncture too for good measure). Now that’s quite a scary thought, isn’t it?!

I was running through a wood in the rain once, and the sound of rain falling through the branches sounded like people running out from behind the trees, coming to get me. I had to keep turning round to check. This was during the day as well, no hope – other than imaginationectomy.

Faster than you – nuff said.

here be MONSTERS (the woods behind nationwide content)

I use to scare the folk that walked their dogs in the woods next to my parents farm when I was a kid. Hide in the woods and throw stones out on to the road behind them, snap a branch in the woods that kind of stuff.

The more wound up they got the more fun it was, I knew the woods really well and could follow them along for ages totally hidden throwing stuff at them. I was a bit of an evil bugger but it was fun. There isn’t much to do in the far north of scotland!

Used to regularly commute past a graveyard located adjacent to an unclassified, unlit road with a non too fast surface.

No matter how I attempted to convince myself there was no threat, I’d gain speed effortlessly on that section…

I was once chased by army helicopters on Woodbury common. Seems I’d chosen a night when they were doing a big exercise- sure made the legs go a bit faster!

used to go night running with the dogs in rivlin and heard everything from womens screams to strangley loud rustlings in the under growth , more scared of large groups of unrully teenagers or falling of the edge.

My first ever night ride I rode in the middle of two other riders (I didnt have any lights) so binners kindly illuminated the rear. On the way home I had to ride 3miles in pitch black with no lights etc etc through swaying trees. I swear that night I could have beaten any Olympic XC racer worth their salt!

Nice pic noteeth, thanks! Am thinking about becoming a road running roadie. It seems that wolfmenmonsters only live in woods.

Went to a Fancy dress party in a full Gorilla suit once. Was entertaining.

I was hammered so decided to walk home to sober up, through some very dark lanes.

Was happily stumbling along when I heard someone on a Scooter coming along the lane. I put the mask on and leaned closer in to the hedge just by a corner.

When the scooter came around the corner I jumped out of the hedge and made myself look really big and scary. The kid locked up, screamed, turned around and rode off still screaming as I ROFLMAO’d a lot!!!

Still makes me chuckle now.

I do alot of night riding alone, it’s brilliant to just stop, flick off the lights and let the eyes try to adjust to the blackness that fills the air.

Whilst planning last years halloween night ride(which never happened) i had to visit many areas where i’ve heard ghostly and horrid stories about, alone on a moonlit night and re-telling the story’s to myself was surreal, the wind was howling through the trees, animals rustled through the leaves, silent bats flicked haunting shadows across the wooded combes and not far away the hoot of owls echoed through the trees around me, i just sat there marvelling at the peacefulness of nature, the contrast of night and day in the hills.

Hundreds of years ago norse men roamed here, drinking merrily, going into the villages for women, their screams and would echo around the hillfort as they were used as play things and slaves to the danish soldiers….

Then many years later the bloodcurdling sound of John Walford cutting his wifes neck from ear to ear an leaving her blood drained and pregnant body dead in the gateway…….

Even stories of the ‘gurt vurm’ left thoughts of what noises were heard in the area over the years……

Then off i rode, into the moonlight and felt alive and free from lifes reality….

I’ve seen noteeths creature running in the woods up here in Scotland on the odd night ride, it never quite catches me and mercifully dissappears from view just as my lungs collapse and I reach the car.

noteeth, is that a still from dogsoldiers?

crackign film, saw the decent a few months later, housemate rented it and we didnt read the back, so had no idea what was going on, feking terifying!

Sometimes the antelope get in if you don’t lock the door properly.

don’t mind riding at night alone. the only reason i bought the lights was so i could disappear somewhere remote(well, as remote as can be in essex) to get stoned. used to really like finding a spot where the branches were swaying and cracking and just forget about everything. took my mate out once and he practically shat himself every time he rode over a twig and heard it go ‘crack’. infact the only thing that i was really afraid of was the benders in the woods. doggers weren’t so bad as you could sneak up with the lights off and then full-beam them. and then ride off real quick obviously….

infact looking back, as kids we used to get stoned in a graveyard. only reason being there was a tap there and we could do buckets. sad really.

glenh??????

as long as the paranoia doesnt kick in Alpin!

Nowt sad aout a bucket now and then.. 😛

Something threw quite a sizable branch at me one night. It just missed me. I looked and there was nothing there but I didn’t hang around to do a search. Still not comfortable going past that bit of the woods by myself but I refuse to give in to it. SRO’s post makes me feel a bit better. You aren’t from Elgin are you SRO?

And here was me thinking I was a complete wuss getting spooked on night rides!

My circuit goes past a lot of old mine works hidden in the Woods and at one point there’s a very deep steep sided (vertical in truth) pit that’s filled with dark manky water at the bottom of a small cliff face. The shape of the cliff bounces the sound of me riding past back at me and in my head it’s TOTALLY a big vicious creature that’s found a way out of the pit and is very hungrilly chasing me as I pedal away.

It’s still fun to be scared silly though 🙂

A great thread this one ! Thought it was just me!!

Im known at work as the wuss who is scared of the dark…

Ive just recently moved to a house that is in 20 mins out of the nearest town…quite a rural location but with a perfect xc farm track commute….unfortunately my route takes me past a rather isolated farm building that I was called to by the police 10 yrs ago ( Im a paramedic)…inside was the badly decaying body of a recluse.

Imagine my delight at cycling past this still derelict property at night with the haunting images still vivd in my brain!

Two off us on a night ride, my lights have gone, so we’re going on a pair of halogens on my mate’s bars. round the bend the BW goes through a farm, we round the bend to come across hundreds of little red eyes all about 4-5 feet off the ground…Turns out the heifers and bullocks had broken out of their pens, they’re all black and brown, so it wasn’t until we were close up we realised what they were. I nearly shat myself…