CHAPTER 4
Rhondda Boys
Late 70`s- early 80`s
This story is about a typical summer weekend down the knights arms pub in Porthcawl.
The pub was full to the brim with bikers, hippy types, surfers and some curious locals, the pub was always populated like this during the late 70s, there were so many customers at the pub that they spilled outside the front of the pub and into what is known as the square, there would be no space inside, every room would be full with people, all enjoying the evening, even with the place being so crowded there was rarely any issues for Ken the Landlord to deal with.
The bar staff were constantly busy and they darted back and forth behind the bar trying their best to fill all the orders of drinks for their thirsty customers, if you were in a rush to have a pint you were out of luck, because the queue at the bar would be three deep.
The pub was always very busy especially on weekends, the Knights arms was one of the busiest pubs around, not just in the seaside town of Porthcawl, but also the surrounding area.
The square outside the pub would have people sitting on the ground or just leaning up against the walls or the low windowsills of the pub, the diverse clientele that frequented this water hole would find wherever space they could for a free place to chill and enjoy their pints, there was always plenty to see, all the different makes of bikes, and the occasional custom copper or café racer, there would be visitor bikers from all over the country, there was always more riders roaring their way into the square from the narrow alley that leads into the square from the seafront promenade, even in the early evening the square outside the pub would soon be filled up with people enjoying the atmosphere.
The pub was crammed inside and out, the pub was always bouncing, always full with people, sometimes it was impossible to get from one room to another.
There was always a constant flow of people in the corridor that ran down the center of the pub, the smell of patchouli oil was always in the air and the music never stopped.
The square at the front of the pub is where all the bikes were always parked up, there was no regular parking spaces, when you pulled up, you just flicked your side stand out and left the bike there.
There was no problem with doing this, people would just walk around the bikes, there were never any issues with personal space or wherever you parked up.
Everything and everyone was chilled.
Like-minded people tend to tolerate each other.
( Photo 1 ) . The knights arms.
Ken Evans the landlord is at center top leftish of the photo waving at the camera, this photo was taken by a resident who lived opposite the Knights Arms in the square, they were taken by an old lady who constantly complained to the police and the council about the bikers and the motorcycle activity in the square, she took a series of photos to back up her complaints and that is why Ken was waving back at her while she took the photos, just to wind her up.
Out at the back of the pub there was a small court yard, and that too was full with people enjoying company of others.
On this night they had a regular band playing, many who preformed there were local bands.
The bands themselves would always jump at the chance of playing a gig at the knights, they knew they would have an audience that would appreciate their music, and the gigs were always well attended by the knights regulars.
On this particular evening there was a band called S.E.X. playing.
Ken Evans the landlord would sometimes set up a make shift stage in the court yard at the back of the pub to accommodate the bands, I remember the band S.E.X. were playing some of their own songs on this night, they played a track called ROCK-STAR which is one of their more popular songs.
( The song can be found on YouTube ).
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Welsh band S.E.X performing “ Rock Star “, official music video. Use the copy and paste command to watch the video, then click go to with web address.
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It was a mild summer night, the seaside town of Porthcawl was full of holidaymakers, any sunny day and Porthcawl would be teaming with people, they came to enjoy the sandy beaches and to take a walk along the coastline and the promenade or spend some money down at the fun fair at Coney Beach or like I did spend most of it in the pub.
( Photo 2 ) . The front of the knights arms, this photo shows the Taff Riders club from Cardiff area, stopping off at the Knights for refreshments while they were out on a run.
In the summer time I was in the knights arms 5 days out of 7, the pub was a 17-mile one way trip for me, but at the time it was my regular and always worth the effort popping down for a couple of pints.
I stopped going to the knight’s after ken gave the pub up in 1981, he then took over running the Pier hotel on the seafront instead which was just literary around the corner opposite the promenade.
I was there on the very last night at the knights with many of my friends, the place was packed to the rafters with people, I can actually remember ken walking around the pub with a camera in his hand filming everyone.
The actual footage of this night is published on YouTube, I spotted myself and some of the guys sitting around a table in the main bar, in part 1 and part 2 of the video’s.
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Knight Arms Porthcawl... Final Night 1981 Part 1
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Knight Arms Porthcawl... Final Night 1981, Part 2
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The link below is a video of the first reunion in 2006, I was also there in the crowd somewhere and in 2007, they played Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd for Ken at the end of the night, Ken’s favorite song.
Knight Arms Reunion 2006
Ken Evans
Sea-Bank Hotel, Porthcawl
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If you left click and drag the mouse across the web address until it is all blue just like the copy and paste command and then right click, a menu will pop up and then click the ( search ) or ( go to prompt ), it will take you directly to the YouTube video.
Or
Just search for Knights arms Porthcawl on YouTube.-
We moved on to the Plough and Harrow in Wick/Monknash after ken left the knights, it was not the same after he left.
The plough pub became our regular haunt, not as busy as the knights arms, but the Plough was our pub and Beryl the landlady was always happy to see us.
I did pop down to the knights after it was taken over by someone else but it did not have the same feel about the place, so my time at the knights had come to an end.
I went down to Porthcawl on a regular basis, when I was there I got to know three bikers who were from the Rhondda valley, they were valley boys, just like I'm a Garw valley boy, they were Rhondda valley boys, there always seem to be a divide between valley people and the people that live down in towns in the lower part of Glamorgan, not a nasty one, but one that seemed to make a difference, if someone was asked where they came from in Wales, if they said from the valleys, there would be some kind of acknowledgement of the fact they were different, it’s hard to put an actual reason for this, maybe it’s because the welsh accent is stronger in valleys, you may think I’m talking Bollocks, but I have seen the difference, check out Cowbridge town and then decide if there is a difference.
I had seen the Rhondda boys down the knights most of the summer, I hung around with these guys if my regular friends were not around, and on this particular night, I was having a couple of pints with them in the main bar of the knights.
We were all sitting around a table near the piano by the front widow and one of the guys spoke up and said he was hungry, and he needed something to eat.
I didn't real know them very well, but I do remember their names, one was called YANTO another had the name of TON, he was a big lad not so tall but quite heavy and the third was called SHIT.
Yes really they called him SHIT, I never found out why, he seemed quite happy about it and accepted the nickname with a smile on his face.
Yanto said lets go find a chip shop, there must be loads around here, so off we went in search of some grub, we headed for John street, one of the main streets in Porthcawl.
John street was just off from the seafront in the middle of the town.
We did not need to go very far, just around the corner from the knights, we walked down one of the side alleyways that ran down the side of the pub and came out by the Porthcawl Hotel and directly opposite there was a café, not so much a chip shop, but they sold hot pasties and pies which you could take away.
( Photo 3 ) . Sidolis Café Porthcawl, ( this was the actual café ). The café was run by Welsh/Italians who immigrated from the town of Bardi in Italy from the 1890s on-wards, it is estimated that around 1000 Italians came to Wales by the end of the 20th century, many of the newcomers opening cafés and fish and chip shops.
It was an Italian café, called Sidolis, it had a tall glass covered counter which displayed what they had on offer, opposite the counter there were simple small square tables for customers to sit around and spend sometime in the café eating their pie and chips.
It was almost 21:00 in the evening, but the town was still buzzing, there were people everywhere, just walking up and down the street, taking an evening walk on the promenade or just wandering from pub to pub.
On a normal day the shops would close at around 5-6 o’clock but there were people still walking about enjoying the warm summer evening and if there are still people around there was money to be made, the fine warm weather had encouraged people to stay out as long as they could taking advantage of the warm evening, these kinds of days are very few and far between in Wales.
A typical day would be a grey overcast wet cold day so everyone did what they could and enjoyed and appreciated the good weather.
The café was packed out with holidaymakers, so all four of us queued up just like everyone else, we did have some hard looks off the tourists and the staff of the cafe.
I think mainly because we were wearing leather jackets with cut-offs and having long hair and maybe being a little on the scruffy side for their liking.
The onlookers were wearing t-shirts and sandals, so there was a little bit of difference in our dress code compared to theirs.
They did not seem to be happy with us being in there, we were getting furtive glance from most of them, but never any eye contact.
The staff behind the counter were also not happy with us being in their café, they too were eager to see us go.
This was a normal reaction by the general public and one we expected and were used too, harassment was a normal state of things back then and being treated like lepers by the general public and looked on as second class citizens was the typical attitude of the day, let's face it, we didn’t give a shit if people didn’t like us, they could just fuck off and go back to pretending we don’t exist, it made no difference to us, who wants to fit in any way.
( Photo 4 ) . Inside a typical Sidolis Café, most Italian café's in Wales were laid out in the same pattern, this example is larger than many of the other café's that can be found in the valleys to the north of Porthcawl, this was the actual café that we went in.
When it was our time to be served there was not a lot of choice left, some pies and pasties and slices of cake, I could not name any of the cakes, because they were of an Italian type and I had never seen them before.
We gave our orders to the staff behind the counter and being polite as possible with please and thank you`s with every request, we bought meat pies, the options was very limited at this late hour, they didn't have a lot of food left which was understandable, they must have been very busy with the amount of people that were in Porthcawl on this warm barmy night.
If I remember correctly, I was last in line in the queue and I too bought a pie which was extremely hot.
When the shop assistant served me, he did not look at me nor take my money off me, I had to place it on top of the glass counter and this was all done without saying a word on his part.
The first Rhondda biker in front of me had a large meat pie in a typical open newspaper wrap which was the standard practice back in the day, nobody took any notice of having this type of food wrapped up in newsprint with the grease from the food leaking through the paper and making the black ink print stick to your hands.
The biker called Shit started eating the pie by the counter while the rest of us were being served, he stayed at the head of the queue, while he stood there he started to take large bites out of the pie.
And then suddenly, in his eagerness to eat the pie, he dropped his pie on to the floor with a loud wet splat, he was so eager to eat something he did not hold on to the pie tightly enough, and possibly the amount of alcohol he had consumed in the Knights may have had a part of his ability to not hold onto the pie.
It was a mince meat pie with a dark rich gravy source “ well that’s what the sign in the café advertised it has “.
The pie hit the floor, it was loud enough for everyone in the café to notice, it sounded so loud because there was no-one talking in the cafe, the other customers were just very quite, with only the faint sound of murmuring coming from the them , they were all seated at the tables watching everything we did.
The pie kind of exploded.
The contents of the pie must have spread over a foot in diameter in all directions, as Sod’s law would have it the pie fell top side down, emptying all the meat from inside the pie on to the tiled floor of the café.
The Rhondda biker that this unfortunate event happened to was the one called SHIT.
He immediately knelt down onto one knee and started to pick the pie up with his hand.
People in the queue and the rest of the café, and just people in general are always curious of little events like this, the whole café stopped what they were doing and stared at the kneeling biker.
The biker named SHIT looked up from his squatting position and scanned the whole café very slowly has if he was recording everyone’s face, while he was still looking around the room, he reached down to the now flat and splattered pie.
He started to scrapped up the gravy covered meat off the tiled floor with his fingers and then started to lick the small meat chunks that had stuck to his hand off with his tongue, he did this while he was still staring back at the watching crowd.
He then proceeded to pick up the rest of the pie off the floor by running his fingers though the mess and put most of it back on to the wrapping paper that he held in his other hand.
There was still some meat remaining on the floor, he scooped up what was left with his fingers and then wiped the remaining meat off his hand on top of what was left of the pie.
In fairness, he had quite a lot to drink before we went to the café and like he said to the disgusted on-looking crowd of people in the café that had watched his every move.
I'M, FUCKING STARVING.
No one else said a thing, you could hear a mouse fart it was so quiet .
He got back on to his feet and kind of stood upright with a little wobble as he gained his balance once more and then headed for the door, he was followed by the gaze of everyone in the café.
There were no words spoken, the café was in complete silence, even the staff kept quiet.
Shit went outside and lent against the window of the café, making a loud bang against the glass has he lost his balance and the window stopped him falling over and there he continued eating his now very messy pie while leaning against the glass, he slowly slid down the window to the pavement still eating his pie.
I could see the relief on the staffs faces when he left the café, they were glad to see us go.
Myself and the other two bikers just laughed at the situation, it was quite a normal event in our eyes.
Yanto spoke to the guy behind the counter “ if you have a mop, I’ll clean the mess up, my friend is a bit on the drunk side “.
The cafe assistant replied ” no it's ok, we'll clean it up, we are used to this kind of thing happening when we stay open late”.
On reflection, I can see why non-biking people of the time had issues with some of our behavior.
The Rhondda boy who dropped the pie was far to pissed to be aware of the disgusted looks he had off the crowd that had been watching him scraping the pie off the floor, not that I think he would have cared in any case .
Like SHIT said.
HE WAS FUCKING STARVING.
( Photo 5 ) . Porthcawl seafront at night.