Lights: why bother!

There's nothing quite like the good old fashioned fun of finding yourself in technical terrain with no lights as night falls.

You soon learn how good human night vision is and quickly find the terrain shoots by much faster than usual.

Then, in a kind of Mr. Miyagi 'wax-on wax-off' moment, you realize you're just ploughing streight over rocks, roots and ruts which would terrify you in daylight - just because you can't see them.

Learned from the darkness my son: the wheel will roll over most objects...it is when you contemplate the fact it may not that you hesitate and fall.

As the man in the Amazon, forty feet up in the canopy walking along a branch in 'Human Planet' says: "If there is fear in your heart you will fall."

Trust your bike. Don't look down. Go dark.