One of the things I got for Christmas was a new pair of cycle lights. More specifically, it was the Cycletorch Shark 500. I’ve written before about trying to get my old rear light fixed up so this set gives me a bright button for the back. My front light was also fairly dim – more than enough to be seen but not enough to safely cycle down an unlit path. In high power (to be honest, probably in medium and low power modes too) it looks amply bright.

I didn’t get to use it much tonight as I walked most of the way with Jane but I think the new light will let me start using the cycle track that runs by the ring road, even in the winter when the combination of no streetlights and headlights from oncoming cars means that it isn’t safe to cycle at anything more than a crawl with my previous illumination. Better yet, the shark is configured so that the brightest part of the beam is concentrated in one patch with the wider illumination being relatively dim; this means I can see what I am cycling into clearly without blinding oncoming drivers or users of the cycle track.

Evenings are beginning to draw out again but I’ve got a good couple of months where I’ll still generally be cycling home in the dark. Or, as it will be now, in the light.