Night riding

[Ajax Bay]

if riding solo at night a head torch is useful for preserving precious juice for navigation

Looking at signposts and routesheets/list of villages/mileages is much easier with a headtorch.

 

[Heltor Chasca]

I recommend a proper night ride. Something like the Dartmoor Ghost or Exmouth Exodus. The transition from being out later than you promised your mum, into the twilight zone when the world is slumbering or going home from the pub, to when the sun starts to come up is quite magical. The sounds and activities of the nocturnal fauna change up a gear too. Sleep deprivation hallucinations can have novelty value as well . I love it. Commuting in the dark is only practice night riding.

I use good Dynamo lights coupled with a head torch which I only turn on when I need to read my gps or take a look down at the chainring, signs, stray sheep etc.

Podcast to recommend: Nocturne. Particularly Ep. 23 and 24 which are about Audax.

 

[Ajax Bay]

I recommend a proper night ride. Something like the Dartmoor Ghost or Exmouth Exodus.
Podcast to recommend: Nocturne

Dartmoor Ghost
Exmouth Exodus
Episode 23
"The ethos of randonneuring emphasizes personal challenge and comraderie. Randonneurs share the goal of having everyone make it to the finish line. They take care of each other, because what they’re doing is kind of crazy and a little dangerous."

 

[Tim Hall]

You will also have to deal with the obvious temporary blindness caused by an oncoming car on any unlit road.

Shut one eye, so you have an undazzled one when the car is gone.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Something of which I was guilty when I started riding with the Fridays.

I soon changed my ways.

That said, using the inbuilt light on your GPS burns the batteries quickly, so if riding solo at night a head torch is useful for preserving precious juice for navigation.

Just put the backlight on low for night riding. I get 24-25 hours out of my GPS with the backlight on all the time. No reason a backlit gps will not last the night if it starts fully charged.

 

[Sixmile]

There are many pleasures of night riding one of which is arriving somewhere and everyone thinking you're absolutely psychotic.

 

[Ajax Bay]

I'd counsel against the use of 'psychotic' as at least some will equate this to the medical usage of the adjective. How about 'mildly bonkers'?

 

[cyberknight]

Its when a badger dives between your wheels on a pitch black lane you know your having fun

 

[Ming the Merciless]

24 hour McDs are of course transforming some night rides. No longer stopping in the cold at a 24 hr services to get some food.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Have you not been on a FNRttC?

Been on the Brighton one, think that stopped at Gatwick

 

[growingvegetables]

24 hour McDs are of course transforming some night rides. No longer stopping in the cold at a 24 hr services to get some food.

MaccyD? Naaah.

I give you the Hole of Horcum, overnight from York to Whitby; just a gale-blasted lay-by on top of the North York Moors. Bring a wee stove 'n a kettle in your pannier (with a damned good windbreak), or ... a thermos or two .

Or Brimham Rocks - that overnight ride, we carried the wherewithal to cook porridge and kippers among the rocks. Timed for solstice sunrise. [Don't tell the National Trust!]

Night rides UN-transformed

 

[Fab Foodie]

While we have been known to stop at McDs, I don't think we've ever stopped 'in the cold at a 24-hour services'. There was a cold garden shed in Wales once, but that was a one-off, at least I think it was.

The Fridays use 24 hr services on Sarfend and Burnham, my Oxford to London ride used Beaconsfield services. They're bike friendly in the small hours, have a range of nosh and plenty toiletage. I wouldn't choose them during 'normal hours'.

 

[Jody]

Yes ... and definitely has its own distinct pleasures .

- riding along with a ghostly barn owl tracking you, 20 feet off your shoulder?
- bats flitting around?
- animals of the night, the ones that pop their heads out of the grass verge ... stop, stare, and wonder what on earth's approaching?
- night-time flower smells?
- a clear, cloudless, moonless sky?
- moonlight?
- riding in a tiny cocoon of light, quite alone, in a different world entirely?
- etc, etc.


Oooh - and riding up long hills is SOOOO much easier at night. [True. Not tongue in cheek. ]

You almost described my ride last night. All of the above with the odd person smoking weed and a few people having sexual encounters

 

[Ming the Merciless]

True. It was the 'in the cold' bit that puzzled me. The ctc night ride from Reading to Lymington used to stop at a garage with no inside seating, so perhaps I was thinking of that.

When I said 24 hr services I was more referring to garages. The ones where you are served through a hatch but can not go inside. So 24hr garage firecourts might ge a better term.

Anywhere you can go inside and be warm and dry being the preference on an overnight ride where it is cold or wet.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

A head torch is also a god send on a night ride. For fixing night time mechanicals etc..