CHAPTER 9
miscommunication
1980`s
As you leave the village of Ewenny heading down towards to the village of Saint Brides major, you cross over the single lane old black metal railway bridge and once you pass this well-designed bottleneck you would travel down a slight gradient and then after a short distance you would enter a tree covered series of twisty bends.
It is only a short stretch of road through the trees, but interesting to ride through, there is a short`ish sweeping down hill approach which is normally white with quarry dust.
On a dry day the leaves on the trees and hedges that line the road are also coated with a dry chalky substance giving them a dull Matt white appearance.
When you reach this short down hill run, there is a sharp turn upwards to the left that twists has it goes up the hill and then pulls tightly to the right and then levels out with a little twist in the road and then it straightens out for a few hundred yards.
This area is totally covered with a tree canopy and looks very much like mother natures version of a tunnel.
The road here is very rarely dry, it always looked a little on the damp side.
Very little sunshine managers to filter through the thick tree cover on to the road so this part of the tree covered tunnel tends to stay damp and always has a carpet of leaves floating around as you ride though it, the leaves are disturbed by any passing vehicle but quickly settle back down again back onto the road once the vehicle passes.
( Photo 1) . Approaching the green tunnel in-between the villages of Ewenny and Saint Brides Major, ( the shortish sweeping hill approach, mentioned above ).
In the green tunnel itself there is on your right a rock face that runs the length of the straight part of the road, there is no room for a pavement and the rock face is inches from the curb, on the left side of the road there is a long drop that falls 20 plus feet / 6 meters or more down into an overgrown wooden cope’s which eventually leads to a small stream called Afon Alun.
It doesn’t take long before you leave the confines of the green tunnel and as soon as you exit this canopy you are met with a sudden down hill bend which bends tightly to the right and then just as quickly straightens back out again, this leads you into what is commonly known has Pant bend by everyone I knew, if it does have an official ancient welsh name no one used it that I am aware of.
( Photo 2 ) . The tree tunnel canopy, on the left side is a long drop down into a hidden stream called Avon Alun ( Alun`s river ) and on the right is the high banking on the right that hides the quarry behind it.
Pant bend is a nice tight hairpin bend, if you have no traffic in front of you can get up to a good speed in the limited run up space you have, everyone had a top speed that they wanted to beat on this bend.
The bend curved to the left and you had to pick your line very carefully as you approached into this hairpin.
The bend itself was not really much of a problem, it was the coming out bit that messed people up, as soon as you left the tight left hand-da at speed you are confronted with a short tight right hand-da that would suddenly straighten, you also have to always keep in mind of the ever present dangers of this road.
Other traffic mainly.
A lot of car drivers find it difficult to stay on their own side of the road for some reason maybe they are just lazy.
As I say the bend is very tight so maybe some car divers just cant judge the speed they need to negotiate the bend safely, there are signs proclaiming that a tight bend is up ahead and the signs warns that you need to slow down in English and in welsh.
Any vehicle ignoring the signs and driving in the middle of the road can compromise your line into the bend as you are banking around the hairpin, you can suddenly find your line blocked by car straddling the white line, which can be disastrous for you and the other vehicle.
the lorries from the quarry are another problem, they are quite common on this road.
a little further up the road is the main entrance to Hobbs Quarry which is regularly used by these man made metal monsters, they are a real danger they are so very big, they have no option but to straddle the white lines in the middle of the road and take up most of the road which is a little disconcerting when you meet one on the bend itself, they also have a tendency to spill their diesel fuel as they round the bend, which make it even more interesting.
And not forgetting the bloody sheep, you can come around a bend and find one in the middle of the road licking the salt out of the cats eyes and you never know what direction it will decide to leave in.
they don’t seem to have any fear of cars, bus’s bikes or lorries, vehicles can pass them within inches and they don’t have a problem with the vehicle being so close to them, which could be inches away and then for no apparent reason, suddenly something trivial like a sweet wrapper will blow past them and then they are all off in different directions in an instant like a Catherine wheel firework.
they are a nightmare.
I always slow down if there any sheep loose on the road, Wales has a lot of open commons and moorland with no fences it, is / was a common sight to have sheep deciding go to sleep on the side of the road, they would just settle on the curb on the actual road itself and chill out there, even with traffic passing them inches away from them, sheep are afraid of everything except noisy metal monster with wheels that can kill the instantly it seems.
very strange things sheep.
even taking all this into consideration it was always fun riding down this part of the road.
This is all leading to an incident that myself and wobble got our self’s into that nearly ended the both of us.
we were both riding along this road on a wet and damp welsh evening it was drizzling again as usual.
I was riding in front on my 750 Rickman/Honda and wobble was on his Honda 550 K3 directly behind me.
we were heading straight down the plough pub just like we would do on any other day, we have ridden down this road 1000`s of times in the past.
( Photo 3 ) . Wobbles Honda CB 550 K3.
we passed through the green tunnel canopy and down and around pant bend no speed attempts today, the weather conditions were not suited to banking hard into a bend that was wet and had the possibility of having diesel spilled on to it from passing lorry’s, you had no chance with wet diesel on the road , if you hit the diesel you and the bike would be off on two separate adventures none of which had a good ending.
so we were just taking it easy, we were in no rush.
the only problem I had was my electrics were damp and wet again and my bike was misfiring like a bitch.
it was dusk and around about the month of October, the weather was changing again, I was use to this bike playing up in wet weather so I knew what to do to get it to behave again.
we came out of the bend and on the straight-ish part of the road we started to accelerate up the straight and my bike was getting worse with the rain, it would only fire on 3 cylinders.
we were very near and were approaching the gateway to the quarry which gave me the opportunity to pull over off the main road because there was was nowhere else to pull over safely, there were no pavements and no street lighting so it was not safe to be on the main road, I needed to spray the bike with WD40 which I always had stashed away on the bike somewhere.
this gateway had a wide off road area in front of it so I waved to wobble indicating I intended to pull into the quarry gateway to get the misfiring sorted.
wobble didn’t have a problem with his engine misfiring in the rain, he had turned his coils around to face the rear of his bike and sealed them from the weather with silicon RTV paste, doing this seemed to have sorted any electrical arcing on his bike, I tried all these kind of things on my 550 F1 and the Rickman, I even tried wrapping the coils in plastic and spraying them first with WD40 before sealing them off.
I listened to all advice from all of the guys and even asked some so called experts at the Annual bike show at Earls Court in London.
all they suggested was to replace all the ignition system or just get a new bike, this kind of advice was no help to me at all, they just wanted me to spend money, I tried all the little tricks that were suggested nothing worked, I just relied on my trusty can of WD40.
one of the main problems which may have been a big factor was that I lived half way up the side of a mountain and the bike was kept outside in all weathers exposed to all kinds of conditions and temperatures, I dare say that didn’t help.
( Photo 4 ) . My 750 Rickman/Honda.
wobble seen me waving and he thought I wanted him to pull alongside me, so I could say something to him, which is something we did all the time, he rode up along side me, just as I started to pull to the right to cross over the road.
we connected with a clash of metal as the two bikes tried to occupy the same space on the road, I broadsided him and sent him off at a tangent.
he shot across the road heading straight for the grass banking on the opposite side of the road, which he instantly avoided hitting by steering the bike to the left cutting right across in front of me, he acted very quickly but he over steered again and to avoid the left banking he had head to back towards the right side again, he managed to do all this in seconds controlling the bike by using his brakes and using aggressive steering, he had managed to cross the complete span of the road twice and ending up in the wrong lane and then he had to pull back to the right quickly, he slowed down enough and brought the bike under control and stopped in the middle of the road sideways about 20 meters up ahead of me.
while wobble was learning new ways on how not fall off, I had my own problems, the second I had hit him I bounced off and veered in towards the banking on my left side, I only just missed the earth banking by inches and just like wobble I over steered in my attempt not to fall off and mount the grass verge.
I was now heading to the right side of the road the direction I Intended to go in the first place.
wobble was just up ahead in front of me, I turned and only just missed the back end of his bike by a fraction, I had nowhere to go except to head for the quarry gateway.
I was fighting my front end, it wanted to go in multiple directions all at the same time.
the metal gate was only feet away from me and I was still moving forward.
I stood on my back brake, my rear wheel locked up and I started to slide sideways, my back end spun around, I had no idea where I was going, I was losing control at this point.
I was just trying not hit any thing hard, I stayed on the bike and struggled with the steering.
I kept sliding towards the gate sideways on, I was expecting to hit the gate and do myself and the bike some damage, but I finely stop and finished up along side the gate.
I had stopped no more than an inch from the heavy steel gate, the bike was pointing back out towards the road, I had spun almost completely around as I slid across the gravel on the road.
I thought “ fuck “.
I just sat there, stunned by what had just happened.
my bike was ticking over but still misfiring and still only running on three cylinders.
I had pulled the clutch in without thinking about it, it was just an automatic reflex, I must have pulled the leaver in when I hit the brakes, I can remember doing it, I only tapped the front brakes not wanting them to lock up, I had double disc’s on the front, if they had locked up I would soon be on my arse sliding up the road.
it is very strange what little things you remember when all this kind of chaos was going on.
All this had happened in seconds, there was no real time to think, it was just a survival thing.
we both have quite a few years experience riding on the roads by this time in our lives and all this road time experience gave us an edge, like I said there was no time to think we just did what we had to do in the time we had.
I will admit It was my fault, I made a quick decision to pull over and I did not put my right hand indicator on, so wobble would not have known I was pulling off the main road.
( Photo 5 ) . The Quarry gateway entrance, just outside the village of Saint Brides Major. ( I ended up along side the quarry gates on the right side of the photo ). note the two suicidal sheep lurking on the left side of the road.
the next think I knew wobble pulled up near me with a big smile on his face.
He said “ fuck me, that was mad “.
I replied ” fucking tell me about, what the fuck happened”.
He replied ” I thought you wanted to say something to me, so I pulled up closer to you and then you turned into me and then I bounced off you ”.
we both laughed at this, there was no harm done so we had something to laugh about.
it was a close call but we both survived it without any injury or damage to the bikes.
we were very lucky that there was no oncoming traffic especially for wobble, he went careering off up the road, he could have been coming back spread across on the front of a bus or a quarry lorry.
( Photo 6 ) . A rough hand drawing of the paths of the bikes after we collided.
Once our hearts had slowed down from the sudden excitement, we worked out what had happened and put down to just another lucky escape form riding motorcycles.
the adrenaline was still pumping around our bodies so we just chilled for a few minutes to let things settle down before we hit the road again, I said to “ wobble I’d better sort out this misfire, the bike is still only running on 3 cylinders “.
Wobble said “ stay on the bike and keep it running, I’ll spray the parts with WD40 that I can see arching on the engine”.
so this is what he did.
he promptly squirted the spray in the direction of the blue sparks under the tank, now this seemed like a good idea at the time, well it was until the bike burst into flames and just remember I was still sitting on it.
suddenly there was a great whooshing sound and a ball of flame rose up in front of my eyes.
once I realized what was happening the adrenaline level in my blood stream increased rapidly again, I could see There were flames licking up the side of the tank, the heat from the ball of fire hit me full in the face and singed my eyebrows.
I shouted “ fucking hell wob, what the fuck are you doing, are you trying to kill me “.
I flicked the bike on to the side stand and stepped away from the bike which only took me a few seconds, I was off in the bike in no time.
wobble was quicker then me, he was well away from the bike even before I put it on the stand.
I had a full tank of petrol, I had only just filled her up at brawn’s garage in lluest village.
Luckily the flames died down very quickly and on inspection no damage was done.
but looking on the bright side, it dried the coils out.
The bike was still ticking over and now on 4 cylinders.
Wobble said with a big smile on his face “ oh well a good start to the night “.
we both laughed again.
I said “ either we are cursed or immortal “.
whatever it was, we could still laugh about it, so after all that excitement we needed a pint to settle our nerves ( any excuse ), so off we went up the plough and I used my indicators this time.
happy days.
( Photo 7 ) . The Plough and Harrow pub our spiritual home.