User1314 said:
Only thing is I have never really done any out of well-lit town cycling before so have no decent lights to see by on dark lanes. What's the minimum I can spend on decent lights?
How long (or short) is a bit of string?
What someone considers acceptable lighting is a personal choice, and I've seen people on these rides with relatively moderate lights. The trouble with normal commuting lights, is that they are more designed to make you visible to cars than they are to light up the road, and some of the route will probably be quite dark.
Personally, as a minimum I'd probably use a Cateye TL-LD1100 rear, although the Smart 1/2 Watt Red LED lights is also very well thought of and a lot cheaper Two rears are always better than one, since if a rear light fails you tend not to notice. For these rides, the rear isn't as much of an issue, since most half decent LEDs with a good set of batteries will do their job of making you noticeable to other road users.
For the front, I'd go for something like a Cateye EL610 Single Shot Plus or Hope Vision 1, but neither of these are cheap lights at around £70-£80. Many people use even brighter lights, but possibly do a lot more night cycling than you do.
Generally with front lights the more you spend, the brighter the light, and you can go all the way up to silly money with a Lupine Betty 14, at a touch under £800.
If you don't want to spend this sort of money, you can just find someone with very good lights, and try and stay with them, although this is obviously a less than perfect approach. As a minimum, you
do still need road legal lights.
