Nearly came a cropper this evening.
Had set off from work at roughly 4pm (started at 8am) when the weather wasn’t too bad. It was spitting a little, but this has never been much of a problem even when the ground is still quite wet. However, as I was heading down Aldershot Road (see map below), the rain picked up enough to completely obliterate my vision. In addition, the electric bike’s breaks barely worked. This resulted in me swerving across the road rather dangerously and then ending up clipping the kerb and falling off the bike. Thankfully I only banged my knee and shin a bit and not much else (in essence I managed to do some mad hopping off the bike before it hit the ground).
View Bike Disaster in a larger map
Since the rain was still coming down extremely heavily, I decided that I couldn’t risk cycling any more and walked the bike from that point upwards to the Worlpesdon stretch of the A322. This was not without further discomfort having had reckless drivers whizzing down the road and going straight through massive puddles causing me to become absolutely drenched (with the occasional mouthful of dirty rain water).
Managed to ride the bike from that point using the cycle path up to Fox Corner when the rain started to hit heavily again (and once more, the occasional covering of water from passing cars) and I decided to walk the bike again up until Knaphill. It took a while, I tell you:
Needless to say, I’m taking the bus for the next few days!
