Lake path walk turned to chaos - Kevin Page

A couple on bikes helped make our walk interesting. Photo / 123rf

Some years back when online was still a new thing, I listened to a recording of an American bloke on his mobile phone while sitting in his car at some traffic lights.

While that might sound a bit odd it wasn’t actually what he was doing that was interesting. It was what he saw.

In a nutshell, the bloke is on the phone to his office discussing pretty mundane stuff when right in front of him a car hits another vehicle. So he starts to tell the person on the end of the line what’s happening.

I won’t spoil it for you in case you do want to check it out yourself but basically what we hear involves the archetypal little old lady with an umbrella assaulting another person while the demeanour of the fellow in the car watching it all disintegrates into heaving fits of laughter with every breathless sentence.

I mention all this because a similar thing happened to me and George The Three-Legged Dog while we were out on a stroll just the other day.

Let me explain.

Where we are at the moment there’s a nice walkway around a lake. There are houses and holiday homes up a bit of a slope on one side of the path and the lake is on the other side at the bottom of a less steep slope.

I’m pushing George along in his buggy, it’s one of those things you see being towed behind a bike but we’ve converted it into more of a pushchair.

So there we are wandering along and out from one of the holiday homes just ahead of us, on the upward side of the slope, comes a young gentleman on a pushbike.

Unfortunately, I don’t speak his language but what I’m sure he was saying to the person following behind was something like “Follow me, it’s easy. You’ll be fine”.

And for him it was, with some skill he piloted his mode of transport down the hill about 20 yards to the path where he turned in a smooth curve and started down the path towards us and then round the corner out of sight.

That’s when the fun started.

Behind him was a young woman, I’m assuming his partner, on a bike that was obviously way too big for her.

And as she started down the slope maybe 10 yards ahead of George and me you could sense the episode was not going to end well. Mainly because she started to shriek.

Now I don’t know whether it was the shrieks that brought help running or whether the two elderly people behind her were already there but as she picked up speed and shrieks on the bike so did they, running after her a few yards behind.

Anyway.

Thankfully the young lady did not part from the bike and do herself an injury as it headed lakeward.

The upshot of that, though, was she was going to get wet and sure enough she ploughed straight down the hill, across the path and into the lake where she eventually fell off in the knee-deep water.

Impressively, the two elderly people also decided they needed to get wet and as George and I drew level on our way past they were trying to help the young woman, by then in tears, to her feet.

Obviously, I couldn’t ignore the scene in front of me so I stopped the buggy, kicked off my footwear and entered the lake to assist.

I’m not sure what was being said but the girl was crying as I got close, supported on either side by the man and the woman.

Then things descended into farce.

As I approached, my back to where I’d just left George in his buggy, the two rescuers suddenly started to shout in my direction.

Before I’d had a chance to work out what they were saying they had let the girl go again and rushed past me . . . to save George!

I’d forgotten to put the brake on in his buggy and as I turned it was heading down the smaller slope to the water.

Showing impressive speed the pair reached the pooch just as he entered the water while I offered a steady arm for the abandoned young lady and escorted her from the water.

And then, as the two rescuers oohed and aahed over George as if he were a newborn baby, and the wet, upset, deserted young girl trudged back up the slope to where she’d come from, the first cyclist came back into view.

As I say, I didn’t understand what he was saying but it sounded to me like “Come on you guys! What’s the holdup?”

I’m not sure if anyone recorded the conversation that followed that clueless comment but if it does show up on the internet anywhere I’d suggest it would be well worth listening to.