Night cycle - Father Hilarious

My wrist watch vibrates to let me know it’s 2am. The cycling clothes I need are already downstairs, so I can get dressed without disturbing my wife… a hopeless exercise because our pet dog is alert to any noise of change in the night. My wife whispers, “have a good ride” as I carefully navigate the bedroom in the dark. Preparation is key to an early start: I pre-ground my coffee so I only have to add hot water, porridge and oat-milk are ready to heat through so I can set off with energy in my body, and the bicycle was checked over to make sure I can just get on it and go. After padding round the house, our dog realises there’s no food or treats waiting for him and heads back to bed.

I read morning prayer while sipping my coffee… it feels a little too early to claim the night has passed and the day lies open before me… but I’ll return to those words in a few hours.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

I’ve lost count of the number of night-time bicycle rides I’ve done, but each brings with it a mixture of trepidation, excitement, and (eventually) a rewarding sense of achievement. I have ridden in groups, and solo. I have started at dusk, or the pre-dawn, and I have even cycled from the beginning of the day before all the way through and into the night. Once or twice I have come out of a meeting to discover that the night has fallen and I’m inadvertently cycling in the darkness.

Pre-checked bicycle ready to head out into the night.

This morning I open the garage door to the pitch black darkness of 2:30am. I have a plan to ride 200km from Slaithwaite to Redcar, via Barnsley, Northallerton, and Saltburn-by-the-sea. It is warm outside: I’m wearing cycling shorts and a short sleeve jersey. The reflective gilet feels like a layer too much, and I take it off. I live on a steep hill and the bicycle is usually left in the gear I scrambled home in, so as I set off there is a click-click-click as I shift up and roll through the empty village and across the first roundabout.

Night time transforms the experience of riding a bicycle: there is no threat of death from a tonne of metal in the hands of a distracted motorist, and the noise that cars bring is absent. It is silent, and you notice how quiet your bicycle is too. Pedalling through villages and onto an A road, we find that the space is ours and ours alone.

The emptiness of the roads illustrated by a photograph of the A62 dual carriageway near Hull

I’m following the A62 into Huddersfield and the traffic lights are defaulted to green the entire way. I move through the deserted edges and I pass shops and businesses with neon lights flashing adverts to the ghosts of consumers. None of this is addressed to me, none of this is my business. I’m leaving and riding into the hills.

A road at night, the word SLOW is illuminated by bicycle front light.

We tend to cycle more slowly at night time; a combination of being careful, with a loss of perspective. We move relatively fast to the ground beneath us, but slower than we would in daylight. It is disconcerting. It is also disconcerting riding in a group at night. The rear lights of our companions don’t move relative to the ground, and are often the only point of reference for our vision. It can become mesmerising to focus for too long on the glowing red LEDs around us: better to lift our eyes and look through the mass of bodies out towards where our front lights are shining. This is easier if you’re not tired.

Three cyclists ahead of me in the dark of an Audax. This was from the London-Edinburgh-London event in 2017.

My first climb of the night is very familiar and is topped by a 24hr petrol station with CoOp shop. The road spikes sharply upwards at first, and I find the twiddly gears again as I souplesse through the stacked houses and past Cafe Root, where the gradient begins to ease and I can pick a slightly smaller sprocket for the same effort. Local knowledge is a significant benefit to cyclists, and I use mine to good effect here, stopping to fill my water bottle – there was no need to leave home into the hills with a full bidon when I know there’s an oasis ahead. On the bonus side, with a full water bottle I now hit a long descent to Denby Dale.

There are a plethora of reliable bicycle lights available now: affordable usb-chargable LED lights which last for hours and light up the road. I still prefer my dynamo lights and the fit-and-forget nature of them. I use a SON dynamo hub together with their front and rear lights. The beam shape is similar to a car headlight because it lights the road and verge, but has a cut-off so I don’t blind oncoming traffic. I love that it is always ready to use – especially on those autumnal evenings when dusk catches me by surprise and it is darker than I expected when I come out of meetings.

A string of cyclists on Paris-Brest-Paris, a group is bleached white by the front light of the rider behind.

Night riding gives familiar places a new feel. Riding across bridges is a particularly special experience. Bridges tend to funnel traffic into a dense stream of cars and trucks, because bridges are the pinch-points where we cross rivers and railways. The architecture of bridges lend themselves to illumination and I’ve often found them to be like a string of jewels in the dark.

Menai Bridge at night, on the Brian Chapman Audax

One of many bridges over the Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead. Night photography blurs our vision.

The Humber Bridge as seen from the southern shore, a string of lights in the dark, with the city lights of Hull in the background.

Cycling at night brings another change in perspective, not only do familiar places feel different – our thoughts can feel different too. Darkness mutes the world, there is less input and fewer things vie for our attention. I find myself able to think about my life and experiences more deeply and for longer than I would in the daytime. Spiritual language talks about coming out of darkness into light; and in a sense, cycling gives our bodies something to do while we process our thoughts. Cycling at night can be a way to give us time to think about our lives, and perhaps find new ways of seeing our predicaments. By deliberately going into this darkness, it might be possible to find our way out of the other kinds of darkness we live in. Maybe as we immerse ourselves in creation’s natural darkness we might find our way out of humankind’s unnatural darkness. Maybe in this darkness we might be more easily able to see the light.

Three cyclists in the deep dark at the foot of the Angel of the North.

Two cyclists in the deep dark at Arnside in Cumbria on a Coast-to-Coast-to-Coast cycle.

Whether I am cycling solo, or in groups; I have found that night riding is a wonderful experience. It is sufficiently out of my routine to be exciting, while awkward enough to stop me doing it all the time. Cycling at night has become a treat I look forward to. That 2am alarm is not as intrusive as you might think.

Hundreds of cyclists at a Control Point on Paris-Brest-Paris.

Summer nights are short, and even though dawn is an hour away the fire of pre-dawn light shines through the clouds above Emily Moor. The night really is passing, and the day really does lie open before me.