CHAPTER 22
THE PLOUGH AND HARROW # 6
THIEVING BIKERS
DISCLAIMER THINGY
This story is about a number of bikers that came from the Neath / Port -Talbot area, it did happen and I’m only writing about the facts that I can remember from all those years ago, and I believe there are only maybe one or two low-life scum that would steal off another biker, and I am not trying paint everyone with the same brush.
So apologies to everyone, if you were one of the Neath / Port-Talbot bikers who were there on that night and were not aware of what the others in your group were doing to another group of bikers that had befriended them and gladly invited them to their pub, and hopefully had nothing to do with the events that took place.
A group of Port-Talbot / Neath bikers would pop up the plough pub, every now and again.
At first we didn’t know any of them, but we are a friendly welcoming lot, and we got to know them after a little while.
They came up every weekend for a full month, we never had any issues with them, and they mixed quite well with everyone.
And then one night everything changed.
They arrived later in the evening, then they had normally been arriving, they would normally turn up approximately the same time on the same day over the past month, normally around 20:00 to 21:00, not that this was of any cause for concern, it was just noticeable that they were not there when we expected them to turn up, they arrived after 22:00, when they did finally arrive, there were around 8 bikes with 4 pillions about 12 people in all.
They came into the back-room where we all usually were in the evening, and they seemed a little standoffish, some of them said HI to us as they filtered in through the door, but no real chat, there were a couple of new faces amongst them.
They all went to the small bar in the corner and chatted amongst themselves, none of them wandered away from the rest of the group and just stayed where they were, not attempting to find a table or sit down or mix with any of us, they had one pint and stayed for only a short time and then left without saying bye to any of us.
We all though this was a little odd, they always said their farewells to us in the past, their behaviour over the previous hour was unsociable compared to what it had been like in the past, we all thought that something was not right, but there again there was nothing to worry about, they kept themselves to themselves so we could see any issues.
At the end of the evening, we all left the pub at the sometime, basically Beryl threw us out, it was well after midnight and beryl wanted to go to bed, so all of us left the pub together in one group, the night was over and it was time to go home.
Everyone started to pull the bikes off the stands and then someone said “ hey, what the fuck, my mirrors gone “.
This drew everyone’s attention wondering what he was going on about.
As the plough was a country pub, there was very little lighting outside on the lane that ran past the pub toward the beach which was a dead end, and only a couple of farms and a few old ruined medieval buildings along the lane’s length, so it didn’t warrant any street lighting, in fact the only street lighting for miles was placed in the local surrounding villages like Wick and Broughton.
What lighting was there was very poor, it simply cast shadows, it was a form of shaded gloom, just enough light to see where you were walking.
Within seconds of the discovery of the missing mirror, a number of people, started to notice bits and pieces were missing on their bikes.
On my bike, both my side panels on my Honda CB 550 had gone, the thieves also attempted to take a set of air horns that I had fitted to the bike, but failed to remove them they were left dangling down on the front mud-guard over the front forks.
Two other bikes had their seats lifted up and an attempt had been made to steal the batteries from under the seats.
There were more side panels were taken off a couple of other bikes.
It may have been a little hasty, but the Port-Talbot bikers were first on the list as the suspects.
We knew some of their names, but no idea where they lived except that they all came from the Neath / Port-Talbot area, and we had no idea where they normally hung out, they never invited us to their pub.
I knew a couple of them worked at the ( Port-Talbot steel works ), the Abbey as it is locally known has, because a few weeks earlier, I overheard two of them talking about how much a tonne of certain type of steel was worth, one said that the blue cobalt was more expensive than another type of steel they produce at the sprawling three-mile lone steel works, as you can imagine I didn’t take much notice of this conversation and for some random reason I remember that snippet to this day.
It is strange what your mind lets you remember.
It looked like the thefts were planned, whoever had done it had waited until they knew that they would not be disturbed because as there were a number of items removed, it would have taken more than a few minutes to attempt remove or disconnect some of the items off the bikes.
The thief’s must have waited and watched the pub to make sure that they would not be disturbed before stealing the stuff.
We were all tamping ( Angry ), if we had caught them, well let's say they would have had trouble riding a bike again.
The Port-Talbot bikers never came back to the plough ever again after this night, which in most of our opinions was an admission of guilt.
Some of us did take a trip down to Port-Talbot hoping to come across one or two of them, but we had no luck, our intention was to find out if they were aware of what happened that night before we started pointing fingers.
But we had no luck finding any of them.
In my opinion the people who did this to us were scum, especially if it was the bikers that we made an effort to befriend.
The bits and pieces that were taken were not really expensive, but it did look as if someone was rebuilding a bike and just needed some bits to complete the bike, after all, the stuff that was taken had been used and was second hand, so the items had no real value to anyone, but maybe for someone that needed the parts to finish a bike off, after a rebuild or an accident.
Everything that was taken of the bikes was easily replaced with minimal cost.
Ok, your now thinking there is no evidence that the bikers at the pub that night had actually stolen anything and in reality they may not have even been aware that anything like this had happened.
The thieves may have taken the items before these guys had even turned up or the thieves may have ripped off the stuff after they had left, as we did not leave for a few hours after port-talbot bikers had gone.
So they may well have been totally innocent of the thefts.
This is all quite possible.
But if you read on you will understand, why I believe one or possible two of the thieves that were there that night at the plough were responsible for the thefts.
( Photo 1 ) . My Honda CB 550 outside my mothers house in Pontycymmer, with the original side panels in place with the eagle stickers.
One of the guys, I knew, who was not a biker ( Ian Williams ), had a workshop behind the flats in Nolton street Bridgend, where Wobble and Fat Mike shared a flat, Ian’s workshop was basically opposite the B.U.S. workshop.
Ian made canoes and surf skies out of fiberglass, so I asked him if he could make a pair of panels to replace the ones that were stolen off my bike, he said, that it was no problem, so I borrowed a left and right panel off PJ, he had the same model Honda CB 550 that I had at the time.
Ian then used PJ`S panels as molds to make some new replacements instead of having a plastic bag covering the side panels where they once were.
The fiberglass replacements fitted perfectly after some whittling and cutting to fit.
I did not need to re-spray them, I left them in the black that they came in, the panel had no mounting lugs so to fix them onto the bike, I simply used black plastic cable ties, this worked fine, if anyone wanted the replacements panels they would have to cut them off the bike, I didn’t intend repainting the panels mainly because I thought that they would not match another CB 550, the model came in various colours, but never black.
In the biking world there is always a keen interest by other bikes to see what bike you are riding around on, after a while you get know what bikes people are riding, even if the rider is not with the bike, every biker tends add bits and bobs to suit their riding or to customize to their own tastes.
So there maybe six bikes all in a row all the same colour and all the same model, but you would instinctively know who owns what bike without thinking too much about it.
Sometimes you can even tell what bike and rider were approaching you coming from a great distance away without seeing any sign of them just by the note of the exhaust.
A few months later, the thefts were almost forgotten and put in the bad times' folder in the back of my mind.
( Photo 2 ) . This photo was taken in 2018, it shows the entrance to the fair on the left-hand side, and the wide grass verge on the right side was where we would normally park the bikes up back in the day, if we intended to have a wander around the Coney Beach Fun Fare.
It was a sunny weekend, so myself and Gaenor went for a ride down to Porthcawl for nothing in particular just for a ride out in the sunshine, we would have a wander around the fair and enjoy the holiday atmosphere, it would only be a short ride on the bikes, we always tried to make the most of the weather, we do not see a lot of good weather in Wales, so any dry sunny day was a good reason to go for a ride.
I was riding on my Honda CB 550 and Gaenor rode her own bike, a yellow Honda CB 250T.
We parked the bikes up directly opposite Porthcawl fair, the fair was called Coney Beach after the American fair in New York.
We were directly across from the Manor Suit club/bar/function hall whatever it was referred has, I think it did a bit of everything.
I remember it was the in-place to go for works organised Christmas dinner, I went there numerous times when I worked at Rexel / Ofrex Engineering, I worked there for 17 years, so I attended quite a few, that was before I got sucked off with the place and just walked away from the job, I spent the following year after I left the firm back-packing around Europe, well 9 months really, lots of stories of my time over there, but I will not be writing them on this blog thingy has they are not relevant to the time period or bike related, I left the bike back home in Wales, well, you can't go backpacking on a motorbike, can you.
Anyway we pulled up onto the wide grass verge and there were a large number of bikes already lined up against the fence.
I took a look over the assembled bikes just to see if anyone I knew was down this way already, and I as scanned them over, I instantly recognised three bikes that belonged to the Port-Talbot bikers that were there that night of the thefts.
One of the bikes was a blue Honda CB 550 and it had side panels that did not match the same shade of paint of the tank.
So I took a closer look and on closer inspection, the fucker had my side panels on his bike.
I don’t know how this guy obtained my panels, he may well have been given them or someone sold them to him, but the bike was defiantly one of the bikes that was up at the plough on the night of the theft.
Maybe someone may have given him the panels, or he may have bought them off someone else, but as far as I was concerned they were my panels, and I was having them back.
Which is what I did.
Gaenor said “ you can’t do that “.
I replied “ yes I can, watch me “ and I promptly removed the panels off the bike.
I then stayed there, next to the Port-Talbot bike, waiting for the biker to return, so I could clear up the issues, I had regained the panels, and to tell him why I took them, I did want to know how he obtained them.
Ok, now you're thinking I’m as bad as the thieves, taking the panels off someone else’s bike, but if you read on you will know how I was so confident that these panels were mine, and come-on who goes to the police about stuff like this, you sort it yourself .
I said to Gaenor “ I’m staying here, and going to wait for the prick to come back “.
We both sat with our backs to the fence facing the fair and waited for about 45 minutes, lots of people came and went, but none of the bikers I was waiting for.
Gaenor was getting board and very stressed, it was a warm day, and we were wasting it, sitting here.
She eventually convinced me to go.
I did want to wait for these guys, her argument was if he had his mates with him, I would have had a problem on my hands, and I did have my side panels back, and I may lose them again, and get a kicking in the process, having a slap would not have bothered me, but losing the panels again was something I didn’t want to happen.
It was the principle on how this guy obtained my panels, not the cost that motivated me to have them back, in my opinion people who steel deserve all the bad Karma that comes in their direction.
I was really pissed off with the fact that it was possible that another biker had stolen my panels, more than anything else, if they were stolen by some thief who randomly took advantage of where the bikes were parked, so be it, like they say shit happens, but if it was one of the bikers we tried to befriend, it was a totally different story.
( Photo 3 ) . The photo shows my black replacement panels on the Honda CB 550, the photo was taken at one of the Beach Party BBQ’s at Nash-Point in 1981, and Dylan chilling on the pillion seat.
I defiantly knew the side panels were my original ones, I recognised them immediately both panels had large Honda eagle stickers / decals stuck to the sides which the guy had not bothered to remove, also on one panel there was a scuff mark on the lower part, bottom side towards the rear foot pegs, sometime in the past, I was doing some maintenance on the bike and I scuffed the outside part of the panel by accidentally standing on it, when it was on the ground, there was also a repair to the holding lug, which I fixed with a small piece of plastic that I had made in work and then glued onto the inside, I had to make and cut the plastic to fit because the panel was curved at the break, it was a good fix, but if you looked closely you could see a faint crack on the outside.
On the other panel I had fitted two small brackets to hold a drip-feed, the type of drip-feed that you would find at the side of a hospital bed that supplies saline solution or some other fluid to a patient.
I had obtained the drip and an in-line regulator with a length of plastic pipe off someone I knew that worked in the Princes of Wales Hospital in Bridgend.
I fixed the drip on to the inside of the panel and then positioned the tube above the drive chain, I did this because when I intended to go on a long run somewhere across the country, I would fill the drip feed with a light oil and adjust the regulator flow so that it would drop a small amount of oil on to the chain.
The oil was deposited directly on to the drive chain while I was riding.
This was done so my chain would not run dry of any lubricant and to extend its working life.
I did this to avoid a repeat of a problem that I had with a chain breaking up into pieces on me, miles from home a couple of years earlier.
The day the drive chain started to disintegrate on me was a bank holiday weekend, it was a nice sunny day, so myself my girlfriend Gaenor and mike and Anne keen his wife, decided to go for a run down to the town of Dartmouth in Devon, around a 360-mile round trip.
Dartmouth was were the pilgrims fathers stopped off from Southampton and then carried on their journey to the new world across the sea in two wooden sailing ships called the Mayflower and the Speedwell.
We had a good run down into Devon with no problems, but on the way back, mike was riding behind me on his black Suzuki GS 750, and he noticed that the rollers on my drive chain were breaking up and bouncing past him off the road surface.
So he let me know by riding alongside me and telling me what he had seen, so we pulled into the first garage that we came across and then on inspection, I found that my chain was totally devoid of any lubricant whatsoever.
It was born dry, how it became so dry I have no idea, I regularly oiled the chain and always carried out service maintenance on all my bikes.
I did spray it with chain oil before we left for the run down to Devon, I always checked my bike over before riding any great distance, to be honest the chain needed replacing and I milked every mile out of it, so maybe it was just worn out.
I bought a liter size bottle of light oil from the garage and put the CB 550 on the main stand and slowly and carefully poured a small amount of oil over the complete length of the chain by turning the wheel with my hand and dripping a very small amount onto the chain as it rolled passed, applying the oil in this fashion, I made sure every part of the chain was coated with oil.
Mike then rode in front for the rest of the way back to Wales, he rode there just in case my chain snapped while we were riding, we still had over a 100 miles to cover before we crossed over the seven bridge back into Wales.
On inspection after we arrived home the chain had lost almost half of its rollers.
On the following Tuesday when the shops where back open again after the bank holiday on Monday, I went straight to PANS bike shop and bought a new heavy-duty drive chain, the right size for the bike off Keith Williams the salesman, he already had one of the correct size in stock on the shelf.
( Photo 4 ) . This photo was taken in Dartmouth Devon, while we waited for the Dartmouth ferry to arrive to take us across the river estuary, Gaenor standing next to my CB 550 and Mike Keen who has now sadly past on, with Anne, Mikes wife trying to steal his wallet . :)
So not to let my chain get in that condition again I made and fitted the drip-feed, which was unique to this bike and the fittings inside the panel could not be found on any other bike and this was something else that made me positive the panels were mine.
Unrelated incident of a theft happened at this same grass verge at a different time during the summertime on a different day.
A lot of bikes are normally parked on this piece of waste ground mainly because of the convenience of the Coney Beach fair being directly opposite across the road.
One day a biker was trying to start his bike nearby where we were parked up, he was getting no success in bringing the engine into life.
So Wobble wandered over to him to see if he could help in any way, when he was only a few feet away from the frustrated biker, he knew what the problem was.
Wobble spoke to the now red-faced sweating guy, who had just worked very hard kicking the engine over hoping it would suddenly burst into life “ you're wasting your time, it’s not going to start “ he said.
The biker looked up from his efforts and stared at wobble and said “ how do you know, you haven’t looked at it, you don’t know what’s wrong with it “.
Wobble replied “ yes I do, it’s obvious, both your carb’s are missing, it’s not going to start without those fitted “.
( Carbs = Carburetors )
The guy looked down at his bike, and for the first time noticed that there was a large space where his Carbs had once lived at the back of the engine.
He said in disbelief “ what, how the fuck did that happen “.
Wobble replied “ it looks like someone has nicked them while you were at the fair, it must have taken them a little while to remove both Carbs “.
The now distraught guy replied “ we have been on the beach for about two hours, they must have been nicked when we were there, fuck, I’ll have to leave the bike here, I live up the valleys, what Wankers would do something like this “.
He was not a happy bunny, and you can't really blame him, he just came down to the coast for a ride on a very rare sunny weekend in Wales, and then some prick ruins his day by stealing parts off his bike.
The real problem is that these opportunist thief’s never get caught, it’s frustrating.
( Photo 5 ) . This photo was taken just a few feet away from the grass verge in Porthcawl, with fat mike, myself, Gaenor, Wobble out of sight taking the photo.
Getting back to the panel’s.
We left Porthcawl with my now returned panels tucked down the front of my leather jacket.
I have to say I did take some pleasure out of the retrieval of these parts, it put a smile on my face knowing that I had them back and I would have given a weeks wages to see the guys face when he went back to his bike and find the panels missing.
Karma is a bitch.
I didn’t fit the panels back onto the 550 just in case they disappeared again.
The fiberglass replacements looked fine and they did the job, and they were more difficult to remove with the zip ties holding them in place.
From that incident up the plough, if any unknown bikers turned up at the plough one or two of us would wander out into the garden at the front of the pub, and maybe sit outside for a while just to keep an eye on the bikes and take a good look at the new arrivals bikes for future reference, just in case something similar happened again in the future.
It still bugs me today all these years later at what these certain individuals had done, ok I know it was not a real big deal, but I found it to be a real turning point in my life on how I would look at a fellow biker in the future, I am a bit of a trusting soul and do not try to judge people, especially other bikers who I believe to be part of a big family with like-minded ideals and morals, and dealing with the same problems we all had during 70s and 80s with the government and police attitude towards bikers of the time, but this incident did tarnish my view a little.
I hope karma came back and bite whoever was responsible for the thefts in the arse.
( Photo 6 ) , Gaenor`s, Honda CB 250 outside her house in Wick.