About a year ago I bumped into an old friend at an art show opening night. Not as posh as it sounds, it was a pop-up show that Oxford Cycle Workshop hosted at their premises in Magdalen Road before it closed, and they became Cycle Oxford.

Dom Scholfield, who founded Oxford Cycle Workshop, was wearing winter mountain biking gear and had what looked like a mini-telescope on his helmet.

A weird choice of clothing for viewing the latest in local artists’ oeuvres, but being a father of two (then, now three) time was of the essence and he had to get his leisure activities in somehow: he was about to go riding around Shotover, he explained.

Shotover has a decent little network of bridleways and it’s worth heading up there for a quick loop or two if you haven’t got time to get to the Chilterns.

But I really couldn’t believe that anyone could or would, at 8pm on a wintry Friday, even consider riding along the Thames towpath for a laugh, never mind going up to the dark, muddy Shotover woods that straddle what was the Roman road to London. I shivered, wished him luck, and returned to my glass of Rioja.

Over the summer riding with a mate, Steven, near his home in Yorkshire, it transpired that the not unchallenging rocky track that we were negotiating was his daily workout. That is, an hour-long mountain bike ride taking in 10 miles of treacherous gradients – and half of the year he does it after dark. Not without lights, of course: he also rode with a powerful helmet-mounted light.

I was disconcerted. Dom is quite weird, hardcore even. He is the sort of person who would sleep in a tent attached to the side of a mountain cliff face he is halfway through climbing. Batting about along narrow pitch-black paths kind of fits his profile. But here was Steven, far from an all-action weirdo, also out at night with a head torch.

Over the summer, I started riding once a week in the Christmas Common area of the Chilterns. My pals and I found some great 20-mile off-road loops that kept us happy for months. As autumn crept up on us, we were caught out earlier and earlier in the evening in the middle of nowhere without lights. It’s not like night-time in the city, with its sodium permahaze.

This is a pitch black, cannot-see-your-handlebars-in-front-of-you kind of darkness. Then one of the lads produced a helmet-mounted light. It was so bright in the deep dark of the countryside it felt like we were riding with our own pocket-sized sun.

Suddenly, super-bright helmet lights made perfect sense and I knew I wanted one but they don’t come cheap, so I began to save.

I found one online, an Exposure Joystick Mk 6, £160, and at 325 lumens, very bright indeed. I took it out in the dark for a test ride but was underwhelmed. For just £30 more, I could get an Exposure Diablo Mk 3 which was three times brighter: 975 lumens. I exchanged the lights and have never looked back.

The light has three settings and even on low I have to avert my gaze from approaching cars to avoid blinding drivers. Off-road, it is like riding in daylight and being helmet-mounted, the beam goes wherever you turn your head. Now after-work rides are as much fun in February as they are in July.

So if you go up to the woods tonight and you see three or four bobbing lights flying down the hill, and ask yourself what kind of a nutcase would ride around in the pitch black, well, now you know...