This evening I decided to try a new cycling route. Well, to be more accurate I decided to go further along a route that I had been along only once before. This route involves cycling uphill into the countryside out behind the Selwo area of Estepona. After a while the road turns to an uneven, rocky track that winds alternately uphill and down. If you go far enough along you find that the track continues on through a tunnel. The one other time that I cycled this route I had turned back immediately after going through the tunnel because it spooked me a bit. It's not a long tunnel but it’s gloomy, it has graffiti sprayed all along the walls and it's a tunnel! In the kind of movies I watch nothing good ever happens in tunnels! I've seen more than enough horror films to know this! Today though I decided to keep going.
I went through the tunnel and carried on along the track. The scenery was lovely, there was nobody else around and I was surrounded by trees and birdsong and greenness and nothing else. At times the track split into two and each time I chose one of the forks randomly and cycled on along it. After a while I thought perhaps I should think about turning back. I had come some way, it was getting late and the sun was starting to sink lower in the sky. But then I noticed that the track just ahead was a nice, long downhill slope and I thought I might cycle down this bit and see where it ended up. So I did.
I freewheeled down, bumping over the numerous ruts and potholes, enjoying building up some speed. When I reached the bottom of the hill I looked around. I was still surrounded by only trees and countryside, nothing else. I hadn't seen another person for the whole time I had been travelling along the track. Then up ahead I noticed a sign indicating that the track was about to reach a dead end and so I thought I would cycle to the end just to have a look. Maybe it was a dead end for cars but not for bikes and it just might lead somewhere interesting. I started off again and hadn’t gone far when in a clearing just in front of me I saw a car parked. The boot of the car was open and there were two men standing at the boot with their backs to me, oblivious to my presence. In that instant I got the impression that they had just dropped something big and heavy into the boot. My over active imagination immediately conjured up images of gangsters, guns and a dead body.
Bringing my bike to a sudden stop I turned around as silently as I could, cursing the loud crunching of the stones under my tyres. Without pausing to turn around to see if the men had turned around and noticed me I quickly set off back the way I had come. I didn't want the men to know that I had seen them or that I had observed whatever it was they may have been doing. My heart was racing as I imagined all sorts of possible ominous scenarios that might result from them realising that I had witnessed their actions. I cycled speedily away, pedalling like the wind in an attempt to put some distance between me and the men. I covered ground quickly but then there it was in front of me, the steep, rocky track that I had flown down mere minutes earlier and which now ascended before me threatening to slow down my escape.
Swiftly changing gears I pedalled uphill as fast as I could. Looking ahead it seemed like the hill stretched on forever but I carried on. The muscles in my legs were burning from the effort of speeding up the rocky slope and I was breathing heavily from my compulsion to keep going. Occasionally I would hear the sound of a car behind me and instinctively turned around in a panic but each time I realised that it was just a car travelling over the toll road bridge that towered up high behind me. I continued along on constant alert for the sound of people or a car coming up behind me until I finally reached the tunnel.
Contrary to my sinister tunnel stereotype I passed through the tunnel without incident and emerged back into the reassuring daylight. I carried on going uphill and down until at last in the distance I could see the point at which the track turned back into the road, that oh so welcome road that went past houses and urbanisations and that promised a return to normality and safety. My legs were so tired but I pedalled as fast as I could until I reached that beautiful Tarmac. From there it was all downhill to the roundabout at the top of the hill close to where I live.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I was almost home!
There was no ‘just when you think you're safe….’ last minute terror. I had made it home safe and sound, without incident or drama. Except perhaps for that of my very over active imagination and my troublesome tunnel-induced paranoia.