From time to time I like to take to the hills and ride my mountain bike, I have even been known to ride at night time, in the dark, in the forest, it’s spooky, here’s a little tale of what happened one dark night…
When riding in the woods at night you get to see a wide range of wildlife: badgers, foxes, owls, lots of rabbits and if you are at the back of the group the drooling fanged monster off the cover of the Iron Maiden album that is right behind you – just don’t look round.
You kind of take it for granted that in our part of the world that there is nothing big out there that might eat you, yes we have all heard about the big cat sightings but even a big cat is not really going to eat you, it will be full of discarded KFC and Mcdonalds and too fat to catch you.
There is a great big black dog that lives in a cottage in the wood, but apart from barking and the occasioanal nip he is fairly harmless so all in all we feel pretty safe and secure in our little leafy wood.
Being the sad bunch that we are we have named a number of trails and one of our favourites is called Agent Orange, it is nice trail through pine woods, with some ditches and gulleys to ride over plus a fallen tree and some exposed roots to bunny hop over. It is on the way home so we often do this last – just for fun. Now Agent Orange runs alongside a local wildlife park that have a pack of wolves as a visitor attraction, they are normally quiet and docile and nothing to worry about.
Winding the night ride up we decided to do our favourite trail and passed alongside the fence adjoining the wildlife park which set the wolf pack off with an unholy howling and baying that was straight out of the Hammer House of Horror sound effect archive. You have never seen six blokes ride so fast in a desperate effort to not be the guy at the back. There were elbows and knees being used to good effect it really was every man for themselves, the ensuing panic meant the herd of bike riders stampeded off the trail and deep into the woods getting lost in the process whilst being pursued by the hounds from hell.
Fancy mountain bike £1,500, hi-tech lights £250, shell and base layers £100 getting chased by a pack of wolves… priceless
