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Addiscombe's Night Ride By James Foreman

Got home last night after the ride, and I couldn't understand anything. Really. Nothing made any sense any more. I was so tired that I'd forgotten how the toaster worked, and had to get my sharing, caring housemates to put bread into it for me.

Odd, because we did exactly the same ride on Sunday, and I felt fine after that. I suppose there happen to be the following differences between riding in the daytime and at night:

· Slow Joe's not there because he hasn't got any lights, so you never have a few minutes rest while he fixes a puncture.

· In the daytime, you don't start hallucinating a huge golden retriever, thirty yards up the trail following Jason's back wheel.

· If you've told everyone else about the imaginary dog, they don't believe you about the fridge at the bottom of Tampax Alley.

· The gangs of youths in Addington that think it's really funny to shout "London to Brighton - _that_ way!" at you don't exist in the daytime. And you're too tired to yell out "Peasants! Back to your hovels!" by 10:30pm.

· Lead acid batteries weigh a ton.

· Your backpack also weighs a ton. This is because you knew there weren't any shops on the trail, so you packed all the things you might need. Like a pump. And five inner tubes, just in case you ran into Joe. And some raisins. And dried apricots. And an apple. And a sweater. And some tools. Some spare change. A Petzl headtorch. A Maglite. A cheese sandwich. Some maps. A gilet. A pair of tights. 3 litres of water. Come the daytime, all you need is a credit card to fuel yourself up at Sainsbury's.

· It's hot at night. In the daytime, it's overcast and threatening rain. At night, when the sun has gone in, it's very very hot. This makes no sense at all, which tends to confuse, befuddle, and further heat you up.

· Everyone else always has brighter lights than you. Even if you persuaded an urchin from the wilds of New Addington to nick you a set of fog lamps and a battery from a BMW, you'd still turn them on only to find that whoever was behind you had lights ten times more powerful. This screws with your vision and makes sure you can see a huge shadow of yourself on the trail, and the trees for twenty yards to the sides of the trail, but not the trail itself. So you turn your lights off, because they don't make an ounce of difference...

· ...and in the daytime, when you're at the back and everyone else has just gone round a corner, you can still see.

· You never find in the daytime that you fitted your lights badly and now you can just see what's in the trees above you, and nothing at ground level.

· Chicanes get bigger at night and shrink to manageable proportions in the daytime. This is the truth. Also, at night you tend to come up with good ideas, like taking a spade to the chicane on the right and building a jump out of it. If you had stayed at home and eaten pies, you wouldn't be thinking anything like that.

· There is no chance that you might be at Warlingham half an hour before last orders, and have to charge back to the Cricketers at warp speed, on a day ride.

· Gravelly hills don't make your rear wheel turn completely sideways in the daytime. Perhaps this is to do with riding in a hurry (see previous point).

· On a day ride, you don't ride for three hours and suddenly find you can't see in front of your face.

So, overall, a great experience, and one that makes me wonder why I don't ride at night more often. Seeing Jason disappear into the depths of the bombhole and wonder if he's ever going to appear again had to be a highlight, as was rushing far too fast up Flint Hill, falling off and then being unable to get the bike moving again due to the high gear it was in. Everything probably felt a bit faster, just because it was dark, and we all managed to get through the night without a single crash. This should stand Pete and I in good stead for Sleepless in the Saddle at the end of the month, although we won't be able to neck a pint after every 25 miles - but if I take half the stuff out of my backpack before then, we'll probably double our average speed…

Boring bits:

25 miles (maybe), no punctures or mechanicals, 1800 calories (according to my watch).

And here are the photos I took last night:

All 5 of us that made it to the end- took this at the top of Gravel Hill just before we sprinted to the Cricketers (from the left that's Mark Cole, Mark Without-Surname, Jason, Pete and me)

The descent to Featherbed Lane - on the bottom at the left is the gully I crashed off on last Tuesday:

The ascent to Flint Hill: