The message I send before every solo ride

There's a particular kind of quiet in the Forest on a weekday morning. You're halfway down something steep, nobody's around, and it's brilliant — right up until the moment you think about what would happen if you didn't get up.

I've ridden here twenty years. I've had one proper off where I sat on the ground for a while working out whether anything was broken, and I've come across two other riders in the same position. Every time, the same thought: nobody knows I'm here.

So here's the thing I do now before every solo ride. It takes about thirty seconds and it costs nothing.

The signal problem

Most of the Forest has no phone signal. Not patchy — none. You can be four hundred metres from the car park with a full battery and no way of calling anyone.

That's fine when everything's going well. It stops being fine the moment you need help, and it's worse than it looks, because the assumption most of us carry around is that a phone is a safety net. Out here it isn't. It's a camera.

The fix isn't a better phone. It's making sure somebody knows where you are before you lose signal, and knows when to worry.

What most people do instead

Nothing, mostly. Or a text that says "off for a ride, back later".

The problem with "back later" is that it never becomes a deadline. Your partner notices you're not home at some point in the afternoon, assumes you stopped for coffee, gives it another hour, tries calling, gets nothing — which is exactly what they'd expect from the Forest — and by the time anyone's genuinely worried it's getting dark and you've been on the ground for four hours.

Nobody does anything wrong in that story. There was just never a moment that required a decision.

The message

This is what I send. Copy it and change the details:

Riding the Forest of Dean today, parked at Cannop Cycle Centre (grid ref SO 608124, GL16 7EH). Back by about 12:00.Most of the forest has no phone signal, so expect to hear nothing until I'm out. But if it gets to 14:00 and you still haven't heard from me, please call 999 — wherever you are — and say: mountain biker overdue in the Forest of Dean, car parked at Cannop Cycle Centre, grid reference SO 607125, postcode GL16 7EH.

Three things in there are doing the work.

The two-hour buffer. Back by twelve, call at two. Long enough that a puncture, a chat in the car park or a second coffee doesn't start a search. Short enough that if you're actually hurt, help is coming before dark. Without the gap you either get false alarms or a message people quietly ignore.

The exact words for the call. This is the bit that matters most and the bit everyone skips. Someone who's worried about you, ringing 999 for the first time in their life, will be asked where you are — and "mountain biking somewhere in the Forest of Dean" is a very large answer. Handing them the sentence in advance means they don't have to think. They read it out.

The car park, not the trail. You might be anywhere on the network, but your car is in one place, and it's the first thing anyone looking for you will find. It narrows the search from a whole forest to one valley.

Who you send it to matters

Pick someone who will look at their phone at two o'clock.

That sounds obvious and it's the most common way this fails. A message to someone in meetings all afternoon surfaces at six. If the only person available is unreliable at that time of day, set an alarm on your own phone for the check-in instead, so you're prompted to send the all-clear rather than relying on them noticing silence.

Two things worth knowing

999 doesn't need your own network. Emergency calls in the UK will use any available network, not just your provider's. So "no bars" doesn't always mean no 999 — it's worth trying even when your phone says you've got nothing.

iPhone 14 and later can reach 999 by satellite. If you're outside cellular coverage entirely, recent iPhones can call or text emergency services over satellite. Hold the side button and either volume button, and if there's no signal it'll offer you the satellite option and walk you through pointing the phone at the sky. Most riders have no idea this exists. It works in the UK, and in a valley with no coverage it's the difference between waiting and being found.

You need a clear view of the sky, so it won't work under dense canopy — but it's worth knowing about before you need it.

Where the app comes in

The one detail in that message you can't easily produce on the trail is the grid reference. UK emergency services and mountain rescue work in OS grid references, and your phone doesn't show you one by default.

Pocket Trails works it out on the device, with no signal, because the conversion happens in the app's own code rather than on a server somewhere. It'll also flash the screen and sound a whistle in the recognised mountain distress pattern if you're hurt and waiting to be found, and there's crash detection that watches for an impact and starts a countdown if you don't respond.

It's free, it works offline, and it's on the web now — there's a link on the Pocket Trails page. It's going to the App Store this autumn, and if you'd like to know the day it lands you can leave your email below. https://pocket-trails.subscribepage.io

But honestly, the app is the smaller half of this. The message is the thing. Send it before your next solo ride.

See you out there.