Unexplained sightings

[QUIST]

Which other phenomena have fellow cyclists come across with no sensible explantion- I've ridden through 2 parallel beams of light, looked like car lights but no car in daylight ( when v. misty) and have seen an animal? trot past me but it ddin't look like any i recognised - also no reflection of light from its eyes,

Odd Gloves

[stewartpratt]

Mostly just wind that's a headwind on the way out and then sneakily turns itself around 180 degrees whilst you're in the pub having lunch and not looking.

I'll swap that for a dead-behind-the-eyes ghost animal any day.

[Audax67]

On PBP 2007 I suddenly found myself in a room somewhere, hobnobbing with ladies and gents in evening dress. Then I woke up and steered back onto the right side of the road.

[reohn2]

QUIST
Are you sure its just you're gloves?

[CREPELLO]

I've photographed a pale sunset that had a radiating shadow running through it, eminating from the horizon - something I've never seen before or since. I'll try and download it later.

Edit: This photo is on an old computer that I'm trying to retieve the files from, so it may be a few days before I can post it here.

[thirdcrank]

On my first YHA tour, in 1958, I visited friends in Ruskington in Lincolnshire. They persuaded me to stay the night so I missed my next booked stop at King's Cliffe YHA. The following day I set off to do two planned days in one to the YHA at Greens Norton. Not a huge distance but with a late start and managing at one point to get hopelessly lost, I arrived at my destination quite late and knackered. I was pleased to find the YHA in the dark, easily identifying it by a tower with the YHA triangle. The very kind warden and his wife gave me some late supper and I was back on my planned route the following day, fully refreshed and raring to go. I did not see the tower the following morning and later decided I must have been hallucinating and imagined the tower. I recounted this traveller's tale to various people over the next few years and then in 1962 when I would have been 17 I went again. (On that occasion, unplanned because I had managed my other trick with the YHA of arriving unbooked at Ivinghoe on the weekly closing night ) Lo and behold, the tower was there, as others with that stamp in their card will remember. So the explanation for this unexplained sighting was that aged 13 I was just about as gormless as I am now.

Here's somebody else's pic

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sludgeulpe ... otostream/

[Nettled Shin]

This doesn't qualify because I think it is explicable, but at the time it was quite disturbing. Up by Durness, late at night, with no-one nearby, there came a loud thumping, rumbling sound. It was at the intensity where I could feel it in my chest. Sometimes it was in front, then to the side, then behind but there was nothing visible! I thought I'd angered the local gods by relieving myself on their territory, but subsequent investigation leads me to the conclusion I'd attracted the attention of the local birds...probably a snipe drumming.

[531colin]

..............................probably a snipe drumming.

That is a very strange sound, particularly if you've never heard it before, there's lots of them doing it, its pitch black and you are all alone on a moor top above Reeth.....
Last time I actually saw one doing it, as it was daylight, outside Langdon Beck hostel, last May.

[CREPELLO]

Got the photo off the old puter. Not a great shot, but you can see what look like shadows radiating from a point on the horizon, somehow blocking the weak sun set light from reflecting on the cloud.

It was taken a few miles west of Hereford in November 2005, looking North IIRC.

Sorry it's not more exiting, but anybody care to offer a theory?

[QUIST]

No its not just my gloves that are ( mostly ) odd it was very odd though cycling through the beams of light. Oddly neither episode made me feel frightened certainly not as scared as when some damn mutt has chased me down the road I turned round to swear at it my false teeth flew out which of course I had to retrieve!

Toby

[thirdcrank]

Shaggy Dog 1 - There I was, chasing this cyclist, when suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a pair of gnashers flying straight at me.
SD 2: That would make a good Helms cartoon. What Happened to the gnashers?
SD 1 After I'd pee'd all over them, the cyclist picked them up, but I've no idea whet he did with them

[jochta]

Got the photo off the old puter. Not a great shot, but you can see what look like shadows radiating from a point on the horizon, somehow blocking the weak sun set light from reflecting on the cloud.

PB121474_edited-2.jpg

It was taken a few miles west of Hereford in November 2005, looking North IIRC.

Sorry it's not more exiting, but anybody care to offer a theory?

They are called Crepuscular rays and are caused by clouds near the horizon casting a long shadow from the setting Sun. The shadows appear to converge on the setting Sun due to perspective.

http://www.dewbow.co.uk/index/cshimages.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOzEtT3pLg8

John

[The Mechanic]

This is not a bike story but just as strange. In 1974 I was on my car on the way to the Lakes for a hiking long weekend off college. I got lost en route and took the wrong road. I decided, after studying the map, to take a short cut back onto the road I should have been on. I was in deepest Pennine country by then. The road I took gradually deteriorated onto two thin strips of tarmac with grass in between and it was starting to get dark. . I stopped to check the map. This is where the scary music starts: I had the window down and as I looked casually to my right a large kangaroo leaped out of the undergrowth alongside the car. I kid you not. I would swear blind that it was a kangaroo. I made like Roger Clark (a famous rally driver of the time) and made a speedy getaway. Still shaking when I arrived at the campsite in Threlkeld where I promptly got the car stuck in the mud. Friendly farmer was very obliging with his tractor. Not one of my best trips to the Lakes.

[QUIST]

They were probably Wallabies if they were in the Pennines.

My gnashers were fine,

Toby

[LollyKat]

Shaggy Dog 1 - There I was, chasing this cyclist, when suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a pair of gnashers flying straight at me.
SD 2: That would make a good Helms cartoon. What Happened to the gnashers?
SD 1 After I'd pee'd all over them, the cyclist picked them up, but I've no idea whet he did with them

My gnashers were fine,

Toby

See above