I am completely lost just ten kilometres from home.

There is a rats nest of narrow, twisting lanes to the north of Truro that either follow or climb over numerous steep sided river valleys, converging on the cathedral city. Truro means ‘three rivers’ in the bastardised Cornish of place names, although there are more than that with subsidiary streams and forgotten hollows. The lanes all look the same. Overhung with oak and sycamore, rough edged, potholed and strewn with the debris of the last Atlantic storm that has washed leaves, branches and soil off the overgrown and neglected fields.

They particularly look the same in the dark.

I haven’t planned this route. It was a temptation to leave the main road and plunge into the darkness and get away from rush hour traffic. I am choosing to go left or right at junctions on the basis that I have an innate sense of direction and that home is …that way. No signposts, no map and as it turns out no sense of direction. The watery, weak and wavering front light can only pick out the next ten metres and it seems to be either uphill or downhill. Heading downhill at forty kilometres an hour as potholes and branches appear briefly in the headlight before vanishing behind me is a really stupid idea but I am cold and tired and its been a hundred miles since leaving home this morning and the temperature is barely above freezing. I just want to be home.

Heading uphill feels hard with those miles in my legs, especially with an impatient car behind although his headlight does at least show me a bit more of the lane and my hunched shadow projected ahead. I hope the back light is still working. My knees are hurting now. If the car is going this way it must lead somewhere – hopefully Truro.

‘Shortlanesend’ says the sign and I have gone wrong by 180 degrees heading north instead of south. At least I know the way home from here and another overly fast descent, braking hard and skidding on gravel on a series of steep hairpins, deep in the shadowed pit of an ancient lane, an arch of trees overhead and owls hooting a warning takes me eventually to Idless Woods and a sign that says ‘Road Closed’. It won’t be closed to cyclists though will it and it isn’t as long as I can climb through the branches of a massive oak that has completely blocked the lane after the weekend storm. Lifting the bike over and then treading under, making a way through the tree I can see the red glow of Truro’s lights ahead and I know I can get home from here.

The lane continues into the city, another steep but familiar hill through the bungalow suburbs, lit by streetlights and comforting to be on a proper road again. Then back into the darkness, headlight fading as I find the lane that leads out of the city and down into the secret valley of home.

I wanted to do a hundred mile ride every month this year and this one has been the hardest although my wife tells me I say that every time I come back. The air was thick and cold, breathing it like sucking through a straw and the bike felt heavy, loaded with stuff I might need and more food than I could eat because I worry too much. But this is the twelfth ride and I have met my target, reached my goal and two days later I am still tired, slothfully completing circuits at the gym and surreptitiously dropping down the weights so I am not sure that achievement has led to peace and fulfilment.

My Strava page has some congratulations – and a few barbed comments about the craziness of cycling all day when it is this cold, this grey. Alone all day and pushing hard against a freezing headwind and for what? My wife has asked if I intend to do the same next year: I said maybe I would up it to 125 miles. She reminds me of previous occasions I have ridden that far and my fervent promise to never, ever do it again. Each time I promise that I have learnt my lesson – and then I do it again.

I get quite anxious riding a bike. I can get quite anxious staying at home too but it is worse on a bike because I feel far from home, far from safety and my mind fixates on what could go wrong. A cold fear tightens my chest, forcing my breath to be shallow and fast. Is that chest pain the first sign of a heart attack. Is that numbness in my foot the beginnings of a stroke? Catastrophe is coming and the level of fear ramps up. How long for an ambulance to find me? Will I be conscious enough to ring for one? Is that farmhouse occupied? Could I go there for help? Will I die here alone, slumped against a hedge? Panic ensues and no matter how fast I ride I can’t leave it behind. It’s called Generalised Anxiety Disorder and it’s laughable if you have never experienced it because it is not based on anything real, just your imagination. My wife tells me ‘Its all in your head” which is true but unhelpful. I have had times when I was so crippled by fear I couldn’t move, believing even a single step might lead to my doom. When it passes you can’t see why you felt that way. You can laugh at yourself.

Some people become so afraid of having a panic attack that they begin to avoid the places or situations that trigger it, which leads to never wanting to leave your house. I can understand that but fight against it and try to carry on doing things that frighten me. It can be exhausting though. Flying is a trigger for me – or being on a train or a ferry. Anywhere you don’t have control.

I carry medication, a benzodiazepine, if it gets too much but I really try hard not to use it. It makes me take risks and then sends me to sleep. My pupils contract and I start to talk too fast. It’s better than being frightened but this stuff is highly addictive and. don’t want to get used to taking it. Sometimes I have to.

So I tread a narrow path between fear and exhilaration. I find going out alone on my bike intimidating but I like the way to makes me feel. I need the challenge, to go a bit further, to go out when the weather is worse, to navigate and solve problems, to see and smell and feel the countryside, the hidden secret lanes that only walkers and cyclists can find. The sea surrounds Cornwall and is never far away. The granite moorlands and hidden valleys, rough grazed or spread with barley and maize between copses of oak and ash and tiny streams that must eventually empty into the sea, finding their own ways between the hulking, light blotting hills. I need that adventure. If it wasn’t cycling it would be climbing or kayaking or sailing but for the last four years it has been cycling. Bikes are easier than kayaks or boats which need a lot of time to set up and sort out. And my climbing partners live far away or are dead or just old.

Which explains why on a very cold December night I was lost on dark lanes a few kilometres from home – and tamping down a rising tide of anxiety successfully. On this occasion.