It all happened so quickly. I felt the back of my bike sliding from under me. In an instant I was falling, then skidding to a stop along the tarmac. My bike was on its side, just ahead of me.

It seemed inexplicable: the Trek Domane bike was so dependable, and the road bone dry. I picked myself up, and lifted the bike to the side of the road. Next, I walked back to the van that had been following me along Longbottom Lane, near Beaconsfield, and thanked the concerned female driver for being so thoughtful. (A distracted driver would surely have ploughed into me and my bike.) I told her a mechanical fault was the likely explanation.

So it proved. As I looked more closely at the bike, to my amazement I saw that the rear mudguard was underneath the wheel. That’s why I suddenly lost all grip on the tarmac, as the wheel suddenly became a sled.

I was cut and bruised, but surprisingly calm. I wasn’t suffering from the shock you typically feel when a driver comes far too close when overtaking. I tried to slide the mudguard back into its intended position, but its light fitting prevented me doing so. How on earth had it slipped past the obstruction in the other direction? It was a mystery.

The only hint I had that something was awry before the accident was an intermittent noise. I stopped to see if I could find the source of the noise a few miles before I came to grief, without success. I’d never have suspected that a mudguard could cause such a spectacular crash…

I counted myself lucky as my wife Karen rescued me and my bike. This was my first cycling accident since I hit a bollard near Prague in 2005. That crash was my fault entirely: I had been filming with a camcorder as we neared the end of our cycling tour from Vienna to the Czech capital. (No GoPro action cameras in those days!) I’ve cycled over 30,000 since that incident, which isn’t a bad safety record.

Three days after my latest crash, I went for a ride on another bike. I wasn’t sure how it would go, as I’d been suffering from aches similar to those I experience the day after a heavy gym session. (I figured that I must have twisted as I fell off the bike.) I was relieved to find no ill effects at all. Indeed, I enjoyed a fast ride, as if a few days’ rest and recovery had given me a renewed zest for cycling. It could have been so different.

Just days before the accident, I entered the 400km London-Wales-London audax bike ride in May 2024. It will be the longest I’ve ever cycled in one go, by a significant margin. Only time will tell if I’m up to the challenge, even without any mechanical disasters!