Saved By Heather Not By A Helmet

So there we are cycling down the side of Blackwater Hill, which at its steepest point is a one in three nerve jangling experience, when a jogger struggles towards us and says, "You two are doing it the easier way." He continues breathlessly towards his goal and Nathalie and myself pull the brake levers even harder to stop ourselves sliding into oblivion, okay into gorse and heather. Anyway less than two minutes later I'm on my back in the heather. I had been doing between 15 and 20 m.p.h when suddenly the bike stopped and I didn't.

It's a slightly surreal moment. I'm a grown man for Darwin's sake and I'm on my back looking up at heather, gorse and a grey sky. I realise that I can't feel my left hand and take the glove off using my right hand, the left looks okay but I can't form a fist. "Nathalie," I call out. She's gone round the corner, oblivious to what's happened to me. I'm a firm believer that parents should cycle behind their children so they can keep and eye on them, unfortunately I don't have somebody riding rear gunner for me.

I ease myself into a sitting position and feel relieved that I was wearing a helmet. Not because my head has made contact with the ground but because a few inches from where I came to rest is a gorse bush and having a bald head any contact between bush and head would have left me looking like a bad shaving accident. Nathalie runs down the path towards me. "Are you okay?"
"I think so," I reply, "my back doesn't feel too great and I can't feel my left hand but it doesn't look swollen."

We are approximately half way round the five mile circuit we do most night, weather permitting, which means that it's a long walk home either way and going back the way we came with our bikes is a non-starter. I push the bike across the rest of the common until I reach the old railway line, this at least means we can cycle on compacted gravel.

That was last Thursday. Friday I was still too shaken to go to work and spent the day moving between bed and living room. My left hand was fine by Monday and I went into work. This week my head has been getting progressively heavier, or so it seems, so I made an appointment to see my chiropractor. Having examined me, twisted my neck this way and that, made some horrible crunching and popping noises using my neck, shoulders and back he announced that I had whiplash injuries and the impact of my back on the ground had sent a shockwave up through my spine, through my neck and shoulder muscles causes them to go into spasm.

Whiplash, from a bike, at 15 miles and hour. I'll never live it down.

As a p.s my boss also had an accident on a pushbike last week, the handlebars came off as he was cycling down a road and he came off the back of the bike - now that is scary!