Any spooky parts on your commute

boocat

i am very lucky that I live in deepest shropshire. I bought my mountain bike (by default of any other type of bike, i should have got a cyclocross type) after selling my motorbike. my daily commute, 9 miles each way, is mainly on b-roads and country lanes but there is a section on a bridleway which then leads through a forest for about two miles. I love it but the forest bit scares the pants off me as all i can hear in snapping twigs and branches, deer hopefully, but its the best training i have. I sprint like a madman on foot up the steep bridleway, jump on, and cycle wide-eyed like a mentalist for about 1.5 miles till i reach a couple of houses at the edge of the woods where i collapse in a heap of sweat.Does any one else have a part of the commute that they really really hate or feel uncomfortable with- apart from getting to work of course? Or am I just a superstitous fairy.

linsen

First three miles in the dark on the way home. If the Fenix is nout fully charged, I can't see where to go AT ALL

londonlivvy

Richmond Park's bottom end with the trees etc between Robin Hood Gate & Kingston Gate scares the bejesus out of me in the dark. I'm always imagining nutters/murderers hiding in the trees. Still, it makes me go up that hill much faster than I normally would. As you say, a good motivator...

prj45

I sometimes ride through Brompton Cemetery, and if it's just dawning or dusking it's even spookier than it is during the day (but there is a chance the gates are shut).

Just the other day it was a bit dark and the crows were making lots of spooky noises in the trees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brompton_Cemetery

roger_merriman

being a country boy i don't tend to get spooked, ( for most of my life one could see the milky way clearly cloud permitting) i'm informed by my better half that bushey/richmound park can be spooky at night,.

hisoka

My commute does have about a mile or so by a canal. Can be rather spooky as no lights other then ones filtering through some trees a bit away. Rather nice though, feels fun.

ansbaradigeidfran

prj45 wrote:

I sometimes ride through Brompton Cemetery

Is that the great big bicycle rack in the sky?

ademort

My commute is 16Km of which around 10Km is on unlit country road, middle of nowhere. As i live in the Netherlands its flat and we get a great deal of mist and fog. There are times when you can see no more than 20 metres in front of you, it is quite spooky, but i am not stopping for anybody believe me Ademort

brigez

prj45 wrote:
I sometimes ride through Brompton Cemetery

ansbaradigeidfran wrote:
Is that the great big bicycle rack in the sky?

Hasn't that one folded in the credit crunch :oops:

prj45

ansbaradigeidfran wrote:

prj45 wrote:

I sometimes ride through Brompton Cemetery

Is that the great big bicycle rack in the sky?

I do like to imagine as darknes falls loads of Brompton's coming out of the graves handlbars first, then unfolding themselves in a sort of stop start slomo fastmo way then riding round in circles with ghosts on them.

*shiver*

Mikelyons

Bushy Park after 7pm

The gates are closed to motor traffic , but are still open for bikes and pedestrians.

There's about 300 deer in there and every so often they will wander across the road.
Last week when I cycled through, the batteries on my front light were fading but I still had enough light to see the jogger who had turned acros my path after being spooked by a deer close to her.

Mike

The Chingford Skinhead

If I take the scenic back-road route in winter I have to go through a park in Tottenham (and if that isn't spooky enough) I either leave the park onto a dark canal going under two bridges - apart from the unleashed dogs you know that if you are approached by a bunch of hoodies there is nowhere to go except the water. Option 2 out of the park is to go under a very dark and narrow railway bridge and along the back road of an industrial estate before joining the cycle-path bit of Tottenham Hale gyratory with its mix of suicide pedestrians and people who just don't understand why there are cycles painted on their footpath / bus stop overflow.

I tend to prefer the busy route that misses the park altogether unless I've got company

always_tyred

A portion of my commute is haunted by Punctugeists.

bluesacs

I had a couple of spooky experiences on the same road in mid wales. It 's just north of Aberdovey and comes down Happy Valley, in towards Tywyn. The road is very quiet, or at least it was then, every road seems to have got a lot busier these days, but anyway back then you never saw anything more than may be a land rover or an old farmer on a tractor.
Coming down that road I used to get a head of steam up, fairly flew down there. It was fairly safe, you could hear anything coming either way. Anyway, coming down the road one summer evening, just as it was getting really dusky and i was thinking that maybe I should put my lights on when I saw another cyclist just going around the next bend, at first i wasn't sure whether I had imagined it, as it was just a shimmer of white and it was gone but coming around the next bend I saw another shimmer disappear around the next bend.
I noticed he had no lights and now I was damned if I was going to stop to put mine on. I wanted to catch him up and sail past him. He must be some touring cyclist, but he was going quick. I put my head down and pedalled like billy ho. But he kept slipping around the bends in front of me until he'd disappeared.
I was a bit miffed as I thought, in my pomp then, that I'd be able to catch anybody on that road, but he'd disappeared into thin air, getting to the junction at the end of the road, there wasn't a sight of him, down to Aberdovey or up to Tywyn.
Anyway, a couple of weeks later coming down the road again, I'd been to see a girl up the valley, it was certainly Happy Valley that night. And a little further down the road I saw that shimmer again, a bit closer this time, it looked like he was really crouched over his bike and going hell for leather, I kicked away, really hard this time, determined to get past him, and see who he was.
Maybe he was slower, maybe I was fired up by romance but I was catching him this time, round every bend I was getting closer. By this time we were both flying down the road and I knew the junction was about half a mile away. I thought I might not be able to catch him.
Now i was coming around the last bend and the junction was in sight. A T-junction and you had to slow down as there was a thick hedge, an old blackthorn hedge, full of thorns and thick enough to stop a mad bull.
I was starting to brake now, brakes squealing but that guy wasn't stopping, he was speeding up into the junction. He couldn't take the turn at that speed. He just kept on and went straight into the hedge.
I coasted up, expecting to see him in the hedge, or in the ditch under the hedge. There was nothing there. He hadn't turned, he'd gone straight into the hedge and now he wasn't there. I could have looked on the other side of the hedge but I wasn't going to climb into that field. It was a warm summer evening but I was covered in a cold sweat.