This happened to me a while ago, riding down a long track, it goes in an out with the hillside and I saw two people ahead of me by many hundred yards. Anyway I get closer and as I’m at the point where I need to start thinking about them [70 yrdish] the man looks in my direction, I’m not bombing as I knew they were there so no point mashing the pedals, the man whos looking at something in the hedge looks in my direction. They carry on walking away from me, and both move right over the RHS of the track. But I’m not really convinced they’ve seen me, call out a greeting but its windy. I shed some more speed. As I get about 20 yards away they both start to veer back into the middle of the track, they haven’t seen/heard me after all loose more speed, 10yrds out, about twice walking speed now, tuck in the LHS call out a cheery hello.
Woman, few yards behind the chap looks over her shoulder, eyes go wide. “Fred! FRED!” with real alarm and panic, so much so she makes me jump. Fred looks over his shoulder, of course already alarmed from her voice, nearly jumps clean out of his skin when he sees me. I’m trying to smile cheerily, while hugging the opposite side of the track, Fred steadies himself (I thought he might fall down the hill at one point), I appologise to Fred for startling him, woman shouts accusingly at me “HE’S DEAF!” with the implied suffix “You heartless brute!” as i tootle gently past Fred, missing him by well over 2 metres. Don’t see what more I could have done, still think mostly the womans fault – she didn’t take me in at all, I was sat up, right in the side, going slow. But maybe they’d had a run in knobbish rider previously. But i did think if I’d just slid by them without saying anything I’d have caused Fred less stress.