Tank

CHAPTER ONE

TANK

1980`s

I had a very surreal moment in the early 1980s, I can't remember exactly when, but I know it was in the summer time because the weather was warm and dry, which made a change for a Welsh summer.

I rode down from the Garw valley, ridding below the steep wooded hillsides, the road snaked around the valley hugging the sides of the valley until I arrived at the base of the valley.

I sped through the street village of Llangeinor, in the village a little up ahead from me I spotted around half a dozen Welsh mountain sheep on the pavement on the opposite side of the road that I was riding on, using a rough estimate by guessing distance by eye, they were around a quarter of a mile away from me, the sheep were all standing on two legs with their front legs braced up against the rusty and battered wire fence, the scruffy looking sheep were stretching their bodies upward making a great effort to capture and eat the leaves off the overgrown trees that overhung the pavement high above their heads, I slowed down by just throttling off, and dropping the engine noise and I let the bike coast passed them silently, sheep are very unpredictable animals and tend to have suicidal tendencies when they are spooked, they go off in all directions like a misguided firework rocket, don’t be misled by the sheep size, they are quite heavy animals, a full-grown ram as been known to weight in as much has twenty stone and even heavier when wet, being hit by one of these wannabe test dummies could ruin your day.

I cut my speed with one eye on the road and the other on the small flock of sheep trying not to draw their attention, I quietly and slowly passed them, they were all to busy looking for some tasty green leaves off the small trees to worry about me.

A little further up this long street village, I could see there were two figures up ahead on my left side, as I approached them I could see one was a boy of around ten years old and his companion was an older man in his forties, I also noticed the bottom half of their jeans were covered in mud and the older man was carrying a large garden spade across his shoulder, also with them were two black and white jack Russell terriers.

The dogs were running around freely with no collars or leads, the dogs darted around the grass banking that was on this side of the road searching for something to hunt.

The dogs turned and looked in my direction, they had heard me come up the road behind them, the dogs made a snap decision and decided I was on their hunt list, both dogs headed towards me like a pair of Exocet missiles.

The older man turned around and looked in my direction, he then frantically called out to the dogs to come to heal, the dogs hesitated at first but were too focused on their prey to follow any commands, the prey just happened to be me.

The dogs crossed right in front of me, making me apply my brakes hard to avoid running them over.

I passed the dogs who had now turned on a sixpence and started to chase me from behind.

I opened the throttle and accelerated away from the yapping dogs.

As I passed the mud covered dog`s owner, who was still standing at the same place on the pavement, he stood there watching the whole chase scene unfold, he started shouting at me as I passed by him “ Fucking Hell, you could have run over my dogs, Fucking bikers”.

I carried on riding, not bothering to looking back, the dogs by now had given up the hunt and I didn’t care about what the older man had said, it wasn’t personnel he was just worried about his dogs, it didn’t matter who’s fault it was, there was no harm done, so happy days.

I did think as I rode along “ Fuck me, I haven’t even left the valley yet, and I have total strangers shouting at me”.

Just another day in valleys.

I cut across though the small village of Brynmenyn and then down into Bryncethin, and then past the Royal Oak pub and headed over Sarn common, we used to call this long open part of road, the Meter House road before they built the M4 motorway, this section of road was devoid of any trees, houses or hedges, just an open grass land and had it`s fair share of wandering sheep, with no fences to keep the sheep off the roads, there was an ever present danger of a random sheep wandering on to the road in front of you as you drove along, so any rider or driver needed to keep a keen eye out at all times traveling across the common, it was a very common sight to see a dead sheep on the side of the road after it had been in some kind of collision with a passing vehicle.

we called this stretch of road the meter house road mainly because sitting on top of a slight rise was a pump house station that looked very much like a small church, many people always assumed it was a single room chapel, which are not that uncommon in Wales, some people were convince it was a small church, but in reality it was a functional building to pump the water pressure up to supply the nearby mental hospital / asylum, it was always a building of interest to passing motorists

( Photo 1 ) . The Cefn Hengoed meter-house, you can see why some people always assumed it was a one room chapel.

Another few miles further up this road and I would arrive in Bridgend town which is only ten miles south from the valley, back then when this story was set, it was a still a busy market town the narrow streets of this old town would be bustling with shoppers from the surrounding valley areas, the pubs and cafés would be full with thirsty and Hungary shoppers who made a day out in shopping in town into an away day holiday and enjoyed browsing the market stalls and the many clothe shops the town had to offer.

The town was only ten miles away from the valley, But the journey down the valley did seem a lot longer as the roads are all twisty and turny with very few straight sections, which was a bonus as it made the ride more interesting.

So I rode through the narrow streets of the town and to my surprise a very un-busy Bridgend town, it was a sunny morning and I was expecting to be gassed by the fumes of diesel cars and buses clogging the streets as the town woke up to its visitors, I was riding my 750 Rickman/Honda, heading for Wick village which lay another 8 miles or so south from Bridgend, the village was nestled down in the green countryside in the vale of Glamorgan.

Once I arrive in wick village, I would pick up my then girlfriend Gaenor, and then we would ride on to the pub, a country pub called the Plough and Harrow which is set deep in green country lanes in a very small farming community called Monknash.

The plough as we all came to call it, was a great pub, the landlady treated bikers for what they were, with no stupid dress rules and she was quite happy with some boisterous behavior, also she tended to ignore a lot of the things we got up too and believe me some of the stuff was quite questionable and would not have been tolerated in any other pub or anywhere else for that matter.

We never stepped out of line with Beryl, if she told us to calm down we did with many apologies, she showed us respect, and we returned it, we were lucky to have her as a landlady, she was a real character, and she knew how to handle us, she was always relaxed around us and seemed to enjoy our company, as one of the guys referred to her, she was a real diamond

( Photo 2 ). My 750 Rickman/Honda, it had the turning circle of a Double Decker Bus, but a good reliable bike.

Beryl the landlady was a character and once met, she was never forgotten and Harry her husband was another character, they were complete opposites to each other, a lot of the time it was a bit like a scene from the faulty towers' comedy sitcom behind the bar, they were both interesting characters in their own right, I could write a whole book about the antics and goings-on that happened behind the bar, beryl was a great landlady and was a lovely tolerant woman, she put with some shit with us, and we had some great times there, because of her relaxed attitude towards us.

Back in Bridgend town, the roads were pretty clear of traffic considering it was a nice warm day, there was hardly anyone in Bridgend town center, it looked like the people of Bridgend had all gone to the seaside towns of Porthcawl or Barry island to spend some time on the sandy beaches for the day, soaking up the sun.

The roads were clear of traffic, with just the occasional car and the old red western welsh bus’s running along their normal route heading in and out of Bridgend town.

The roads back then were not as busy as they are nowa days, if three cars were in a line traveling on the road behind each other, it would have been a convoy.

I rode through the narrow streets of the town passing the Coity Castle pub and then under the old black steel railway bridge, then sharply pulling into Derwen road then continuing up to Nolton street at the far end of town, I rode past the old post office garages and high above the tall wooden doors there is a Royal cipher of an English king, Edward the 3rd who abdicated in 1936, he was on the English throne for less then a year, there are only two of these royal ciphers in the world, one in Bridgend on Derwen road and the other in Scotland.

I continued up Derwen road and I could see in the distance some customers of the Castle pub enjoying a pint in the sunshine outside on the pavement, they were leaning against the low windows of the old pub chatting to each other and watching the traffic trundle down into Caroline street, they were totally unaware that they were being watched by a stone gargoyle perched high up under the rain gutting of the old police station opposite the pub, i always made a point of catching a glimpse of the demonic face of the gargoyle if I ever rode up this road, i was always curious of why there was a gargoyle there in the first place, it's a cop station for god’s sake it's not a castle or a church, why was it there.?

As I pulled up to the traffic lights at the very top end of Nolton street, merve the swerve Jeffery's a salesman at Two Wheel Services bike shop was moving the display of bikes outside the shop, he looked up as I pulled up at the lights, these lights always seemed to be on red every time I approached them.

Merve nodded his head at me, I nodded back without saying a word, not that he could have heard me anyway with the noise of the passing traffic.

This was me being polite, Merve was a friend to no-one but himself, merve was a bit of what we called a rip off artist as a salesman any unknowing biker buying a bike off this guy would also have Merve`s very own tax on the price when he paid for the bike, the only person getting a deal with merve was merve.

I knew of this mercenary approach to sales with Merve because of the kind of world I lived in, he was well known for adding his own personal tax on the price of what he would call a bargain, otherwise the only time he would have been on my radar was when I wanted to buy a bike.

I only ever bought two bikes from two wheel services, this is a very low mount considering I changed my bikes every few years and have ridden for more that forty odd years, the bikes were a BSA Bantam D14/4 in 1972 and my Kawasaki Z 1000 LTD in 1986.

On the opposite side of the road from the bike shop, i saw a friend of mine who we all lovingly called Fat Mike, he shared a flat with another friend by the name of Wobble, the flat was above the post office, which now in 2019 is a kebab shop, this flat was where, there were many a party back in the day.

Mike shouted at me across the passing traffic “ hey frog, you going down the plough later ”.

I answered “ yeah going to wick first then up to the plough “.

The lights changed to green, so I gave him a wave, he gave me a wave back and Mike shouted over the traffic that had built up at the traffic lights, ” see you down there, I'll be down there a bit later tonight “.

Sadly Mike has now gone to the great bike rally in the sky, he had a very dry kind of humor which always made me laugh, i have many stories involving him especially when he was living at the flat with Wobble, hopefully I will get around to putting some of them on here, before I see him next.

I headed out of town past Leslie Griffith's bike shop on Ewenny road which we all called PANS for some reason, I still don’t really know why it had that nickname, I have been told a number of different versions.

Within a minute or so, gone were the grey two-story houses that lined the road the yellow railings of the Bridgend school for blind children, the green unkempt hedges whizzed past as i carried on my journey down into the vale, I was in the countryside now, just trees, hedges and sheep, the traffic was still very light, not that this countrified lane was ever that busy, most traffic used the quicker A48 or the M4 motorway. The roads were bone dry, I could see the shimmer of heat coming off the tarmac as I rode along, the sun was so hot I could feel the heat from the sun through my leather jacket, fly’s and other nondescript bugs where bouncing off my helmet visor at an alarming rate, they all seemed bent of committing suicide using an ill thought-out kamikaze attack.

I noticed the light brown dry soil at the base of the hedges that lined both sides of the road past Ewenny potteries had dried out to a point where the soil particles had become lose grains like sand and were swirling around like little miniature whirl winds.

A bus had passed me halfway up the hill, coming from the opposite direction, the bus changed down a gear trying to keep its momentum up as it climbed the hill past the potteries, the hot black exhaust fumes choked me as the bus drove by, it was impossible not hear the bus engine changing gear, the diver must have been losing the battle with the steep hill and dropped a gear down causing the engine to belch out the black fumes in protest and in doing so covered me in a black sooty cloud of burnt carbon.

I had just now past Ewenny potteries heading down the hill and just before the junction that leads to the picturesque thatched roof village of Merthyr Mawr and a little before the bridge that spans the river Ewenny, I noticed marks on the road that looked like as if a tractor had just been passed by.

The marks were small regularly spaced scuff marks at set intervals indicating a track vehicle or a tractor of some kind, at first I thought that this was a tractor, it was not uncommon on the roads during harvest time in the countryside to have many tractors moving from one field to another doing their everyday farming jobs.

So after seeing the scuff marks I slowed down for my own safety, not wanting to be impaled on the back of a tractor with a threshing machine fixed to rear of it, which nearly happened to me once, far to many spikes it would be like a scene out of a Rob Zombie film, so I would try and give that a miss, the risk was not worth taking, tractors are slow moving vehicles and there was never a guarantee I would stop in time, yes do I understand that every life must end and I know someday we must all go to the great bike rally in the sky, but maybe not looking like a kebab covered in BBQ sauce, stuck on a large selection of pointy pieces of metal.

There were no other cars or bikes on the road, the bus had noisily made its way into Bridgend leaving a black toxic cloud behind it.

it was a beautiful nice warm day, excellent for riding through the lanes, then as I passed the Corntown village junction keeping an eye out for the tractor, suddenly on my left I came up on something I never expected to see in a county lane.

Waiting at the junction was a bluey/green Ford Anglia car with an old guy with short grey hair leaning over his steering wheel, he had both his hands at 11 and 1 o’clock on the wheel, leaning forward and stretching his neck as close to the windscreen as he possibly could, he was watching a very large green lump of metal trundling by.

( Photo 3 ) . The junction where I first saw the tank, the Ford Anglia car was waiting at this junction, Corntown is on the left, why it is called a town i don't know, it's only just big enough to be called it a village.

I had just caught up with a W.W.2 era Sherman tank, it was minding its own business quietly crawling along at its own pace in the middle of the road, not that there was any room for any other vehicles, the tank was straddling the white lines that separated the two halves of the road, so after realizing what I was looking at I slowed right down behind the tank, thinking where the fuck did that come from and where the fuck was it going.

It was the standard colour of a tank that you would expect to see, olive drab, a standard non-reflective army dark green colour

( Photo 4 ) . The tank on the road in Corntown and looked very much like this one.

The tank sped up a little to tackle the oncoming hill which just lay ahead before the junction which carried onto the coastal village of Ogmore by sea, the tank engine revved up and in doing so a great cloud of white smoke came from the exhaust obscuring my view, I had been gassed again but this time I did not choke on the fumes.

I made no attempt to overtake it, not that I had any room to do so, there was a small pavement on my left side with trees running alongside the pavement with a small over hanging hedge, the other side of the road had just had a hedge that sat directly onto the road with it's foliage trimmed back flat by the constant flow of passing traffic.

The tank driver put his foot down on the accelerator and the roar from the engine was awesome, I could feel the vibration through my handle bars, I had to drop the bike down to first gear to keep my distance has the tank struggled up the slight rise, the road leveled off just before the single lane railway bridge that leads to a great open bendy part of the road called Pant Bend.

Pant Bend is a nice sweeping bend that myself and other bikers try to go around has fast has possible, no pavements or hedges just weather eroded earth banking`s higher than the road.

After Pant Bend the road then runs into a village called Saint Brides Major where you had to slow down to the 30 mph speed limit until the next open part of the road towards the village of Wick.

The tank moved completely across the wrong side of the road to make it’s left turn, it turned down into a leafy lane that leads into JAB`S scrap yard.

I actually stopped the bike in the middle of the road has I came up to the junction, i clicked the bike into neutral and watched the Tank disappear down the lane toward the quarry.

A blast from a car horn directly behind me made me turn in my seat, I was expecting some road rage from an inpatient car driver, but to my surprise it was the old guy in the ford Anglia that i had spotted at the Corntown auction.

( Photo 5 ) . A ford Anglia, the same colour and type I saw at the junction.

The old guy in the Ford Anglia had followed myself and the tank up the hill, he looked at me and gave me a right big smile and gave me a thumbs up, and he too watched the tank disappear out of sight down the leafy lane, both of us had stopped in the middle of the road and we stayed there until the tank went out of our view and disappeared into JABS quarry and in time a line of traffic started to build up behind us, the cars could not overtake us because the road was so narrow.

A few beeps from the horns of the waiting cars who were not knowing or cared why we were both parked up in the middle of the road, encouraged us to move on.

I turned in my seat once more and gave the ford Anglia driver a wave and then carried on with my uneventful ride down to Wick.

I didn’t think so much of it at the time, but now thinking about how surreal it was, it is not every day you get held up by a W.W. 2 American tank on a quiet Welsh county road, after all the war had been over for 50 years or so by then, I did see the same tank a number of times in coming years, making it’s way back and forth from JAB`S scrap yard.

Many years later, I have been given some information about the tank from one of my friends.

( Thanks to Charlie Lewis ).

The owner of the tank was a Mr. Bruce Jenkins and the tank was used for sometime to crush cars in JABS scrap yard because the industrial car crusher they had used had broken down and the tank was a cheaper and efficient alternative until they fixed or obtained a new crusher.

The Sherman tank was also used in carnivals and has an advertising board for the scrap yard.

The tank was a Canadian built Sherman and fitted with a radial aero engine, there were more than 50,000 of the same kind of tank made during the second world war and at the end of the hostilities most of the tanks were sold off for scrap.

The last time I can remember seeing the same tank was in a field parked up and used as an attraction for the Corntown Village feat with many kids crawling all over it and ironically the field was only yards away from the road that I first saw the tank.

I did try and find out what happened to it after it disappeared but had no luck getting any information of it’s whereabouts or what had become of it.

( Photo 6 ) . This is the very same Sherman tank that I saw on the road, it was being used here by the well known biker pub the Knights Arms in the Porthcawl carnival in the 1980s.