LIFE is full of surprises – and sometimes even sssssssurprises.

I have seen snakes in zoos, obviously, and we once saw one in a park in the United States, but for the first 54 years of my life, until the other day, I had never seen one in the wild in Britain.

That all changed when I was heading for Marlborough on my bike.

My route takes me along the old railway line that stretches from Chiseldon but first, I have to make my way through Coate Water.

There is a lovely path that connects the park with a footbridge over the motorway and the back road into Chiseldon and just as I was leaving Coate behind, I came round the corner to be confronted by a slippery character, right on the path in front of me.

It quickly slithered across the sunlit path before disappearing into the hedgerow, but if I had arrived just one second earlier I would not have been able to avoid running over him.

I instinctively stopped and reached for my phone to take a picture, but he was already gone, leaving me wondering if I could believe my own eyes.

There are only three kinds of snake in this country, which should make identifying the species easy, but if you are colourblind like me, they are all the same colour.

So it’s possible he was a boring grass snake or a run-of-the-mill smooth snake.

But I am definitely leaning towards him being their far more exciting cousin, an adder, because of the distinctive markings on his back and the shape of his head, which was a pointy heart shape, rather than the fatter heads of the others.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t get within half a mile of a snake by choice, and if there was one in our house I’d run a mile and never go home. But I can talk about it bravely now because he was only a youngster – about half the length of my belt – and I was towering above him on my bike.

In the last two or three years I have become very fond of hopping on my bike and cycling around Swindon, and one of the joys of it is getting to see genuine wildlife.

The snake takes over as the most impressive animal I’ve seen so far, although the deer I saw, one evening, on the old railway line between Moredon and Rivermead was pretty cool too.

If I was a bird spotter I could also tell you about all the different species of feathered animals I see every day, and at this time of year rabbits run across my path on every journey.

I still haven’t ruled out the possibility that they dare each other to see if they can get across in front of me without getting squished.

My closest encounter was with a kamikaze squirrel who missed my wheel – not by a couple of feet, like the snake, but rather a single millimetre, and avoiding him was a severe test of my ability to keep the bike upright.

For that reason, I am much more fearful of squirrels than snakes, especially as, in my experience, you only get to see a snake once every 54 years.

As much as we instinctively dislike snakes, it felt like a great privilege to catch a glimpse of the only venomous wild animal in Britain and the one that therefore qualifies as the second most dangerous.

But you are safe from them on a bike and they are positively friendly compared with that most dangerous animal stalking the leafy lanes of our countryside, namely van drivers.