Most unusual thing you've collided with whilst cycling

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PK99

Legendary Member
Location
SW19
Riding on the road over Epsom Downs, someone was having a garden bonfire, with thick smoke blowing across the road. Decided to ride on through.

Only it wasn't smoke. It was a fully fledged swarm of bees. An interesting experience.
 

Gwylan

Veteran
Location
All at seaβ›΅
A front door!

In the Ardennes
 

rogerzilla

Legendary Member
I bisected a pigeon on the A420 (while narrowly escaping a similar fate from a convoy of travellers which was passing very closely, and eventually caused me to escape into a layby).
 

taximan

senex crepitu iuvenis cordi esse
Riding with a mate on a footpath through a field, we heard what we thought at first was something rumbling. When we looked we were horrified to see a herd of bullocks at full gallop heading straight for us so we made a dash for the nearest hedge-back, where we abandoned the bikes and fought our way through. Unfortunately the hedge was made up with a number of blackthorn bushes and had a barbed wire fence down one side so we came off second best.:B) The bikes survived better than we did even though they were trampled on by a herd of cattle. This happened when I was still at school and I still have the scars to this day. ....................... :bicycle: :bicycle: πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚
 
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nickyboy

Norven Mankey
One of those really big bolts used to hold HGV wheels on the axle.

Not a big deal, except it was a big deal as I was doing about 35mph descending the Cat and Fiddle into Buxton. Immediate blow out puncture of front wheel and riding on the rims. Managed to stop it in a straight line just before I got to the crash barriers on a sharp bend. Had to walk into Buxton as tyre was trashed
 

tyred

Legendary Member
Location
Ireland
I got hit on the cheek by an unidentified small bird that flew out of the hedgerow when descending at speed. I have no idea how or where the bird went but I had a big bruise :cursing:

Many years ago, my uncle collided with a black bullock in the dark. He was going down hill at speed and although he had lights, lights 1950's weren't much good and he didn't see the animal standing on the road until it was too late to do anything about it so he hit it and went flying over it's back and he spent the next week picking gravel out of the palms of his hands. The forks were bent on the bike. The bullock continued grazing the roadside verge as if nothing had happened.
 

byegad

Legendary Member
Location
NE England
Not exactly collided, but on a railway path in County Durham, while on my recumbent trike, I checked up for a dog and its owner on a long straight section, as he saw me he grabbed the dog and just as I got to him, he let it go. It crossed in front of me and the long lead became entangled with first the chainring, then one of the front wheels. He looked at me as if to say 'why did you do that'? I realised that getting the lead unentangled was going to be a big job, then he started to rant about bloody cyclists. Rather than argue I whipped out my keys, on which I carry a tiny Swiss army knife and cut the lead either side of the trike and departed. The look on his face was something I cherish to this day.

Many years ago, I was 12 or so, I encountered a rather posh lady walking her Dachshund on the pavement. As I neared her, hugging the kerb for an oncoming ICI 8 wheel tanker, it leapt into the road snarling and showing an impressive array of teeth, Braking hard I managed to stop barely in time, pinning the dog to the road with my front wheel. I hadn't run over it, merely pinned it in the middle of the 'sausage'. It went totally ape poo making determined efforts to take a lump out of my ankle while I kept it pinned in order to avoid that outcome. She screamed at me, in upper class English, to roll back and let the dog move I shouted at her, in Heavy Industrial English, to grab the thing and I would. Eventually she grabbed its collar and I pulled back and promptly did one down the road. I suspect it was uninjured and I was grateful to also was intact.
 
On a windy day I had a tree fall on me during my commute home.

Luckily, it was the topmost branches that hit me and knocked me off, as I could see the tree starting to come down and moved to the other side of the road. If the main trunk had hit me I may have been a gonner!

As it was I ended up with a few scrapes and a fair bit of damage to my helmet (from the tree, not the road).
 

rogerzilla

Legendary Member
This wasn't me, but I heard of someone who went over the bars when commuting home on a dark, and very cold, winter night. The object: a pile of horse poo that had been there long enough to freeze solid.
 

geocycle

Legendary Member
My most precarious collision was with a rabbit. Normally they are flat or agile whereas this one was frozen solid to the tarmac. Like hitting a brick!
 

grldtnr

Senior Member
Riding with a mate on a footpath through a field, we heard what we thought at first was something rumbling. When we looked we were horrified to see a herd of bullocks at full gallop heading straight for us so we made a dash for the nearest hedge-back, where we abandoned the bikes and fought our way through. Unfortunately the hedge was made up with a number of blackthorn bushes and had a barbed wire fence down one side so we came off second best.:B) The bikes survived better than we did even though they were trampled on by a herd of cattle. This happened when I was still at school and I still have the scars to this day. ....................... :bicycle: :bicycle: πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚πŸ‚

What? A load of bullocks!
 

presta

Guru
A blind man
I was cycling past a care home once as one of the residents was stood waiting to cross the road. I had no reason to think he hadn't seen me, but just as I passed he stepped off the kerb, and my left shoulder hit him square on the jaw. As I screeched to a halt, I turned and saw him spitting out a mouthful of broken false teeth. Fortunately he was unhurt apart from that. (he wasn't blind, he just hadn't seen me.)
Carrier bag which then went into the rear mech. The back wheel locked, the mech hanger sheared off and I did a swift 180 at 12 mph as the back tyre exploded.
I once set off from my last butty stop of the day at Castle Park Colchester without fastening one of the pannier straps. I rode 16 miles home without any problem, then as I turned off the drive onto the patio at the back of the house it got chewed into the rear derailleur. No harm done, just a greasy strap to clean up.
I know someone who was riding along the Rochdale canal towpath when he went under a low bridge and forgot to duck! He headbutted the bridge and ended up in the canal, along with his bike ...
I once slipped on mud on the towpath at Skipton, but went down the embankment, not into the drink.
my shoelace got caught in the front cogs between the chain and the cogs themselves and somehow flipped me over the handlebars
I've had several laces get caught in the chainring, but they've always snapped rather than throwing me off. Nowadays I always tuck them into my shoes. On one occasion I had the bottom of my trouser leg drop over the end of the cotter pin, and then get wound round the crank, pedalling backwards fixed that.
Only kidding, however I have bumped into 3 lots of dogging going on with lots of flesh on view on 3 occasions now, I suppose the quiet Lincolnshire lanes lends itself quite well to this sort of activity.
Once when I stopped for a pee near Slimbridge hostel I heard a couple hastily trying to get dressed on the other side of the hedge...
View attachment 259375

Just missed this guy (that's my tyre track) in the Luangwa valley in Zambia. Puff adder. About an hour later I ran over a green snake, probably either a Boomslang or a Greean Mamba, that was sunbathing on the road. I thought it was a a stick until it got angry.
The first adder I ever saw was dead where it had been run over by a bike, and the second went completely unnoticed until it suddenly recoiled out from under my size 12 boot as I was about to tread on it. It had all the excuse it needed to strike, but it didn't, and I've had a bit of a liking for adders ever since.
When I were a lad I shut my eyes while riding my bike intending to count to ten , then see where I ended up.I never got to ten, I.'d crossed the road and smashed into a lampost at about six seconds, right in front of a canteen full of women looking through the window. I can still hear em laughing now.
I was suddenly taken by an urge to see if I could ride between the double yellow lines without touching them. I'd been doing quite well, concentrating on looking down between my legs, when all of a sudden there was a clunk, and I found myself on the roof of a parked car. Fortunately the blokes in the car were more embarrassed about being parked on a double yellow line than I was about being on the roof of their car. :laugh:
 

grldtnr

Senior Member
I once almost parked my front wheel between Sir Douglas Hurds' arse cheeks whilst doing a Audax out in Oxfordshire, he was remarkably sanquine about it at the time.
In my defence I was going downhill, it was wet & a narrow country lane, he was walking in the road, there wasn't a footpath, but I think I gave his protection officers, the wobbles, I wasn't that enamoured myself, being a staunch Labour voter!
It seems the Lord Hurd is still around, no doubt still avoiding careering cyclists down country lanes.
Not a collision as such , but a narrow squeak, whether as home Sec , Lord Hurd would have absolved me from prosecution ,I really don't know.
 
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