Chapter 30
Close Calls
late 1970`s
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Close Call # 1
The junction
I was riding around on my Yamaha RD 350, it was a lovely dry day, a little on the cloudy side with the sun deciding now and again to peep his head around brilliant white clouds, which on this day looked very much like large lumps of cotton wool.
I was riding down the valley and I decided to change my normal route, so I crossed over the colliery railway bridge at Pontycymmer square, so I could ride down on the Garreg side of the valley, mainly because I could ride faster on this side of the valley, as it was mostly devoid of any buildings, there was only the little village of Braich-y-Cymmer on this side of the valley.
All I needed to watch out for was a rogue sheep that may have been licking the rock salt out of the cat’s-eyes in the middle of the road, otherwise I had a clean run, the narrow road was a twisty run, but with no houses and no parked cars slowing me down.
At Tylagwyn a couple of miles down the valley, I had to slow down to re-cross another railway bridge as the road on Garreg side had come to an end, and it was necessary to cross over onto the main road, so I could carry on down the valley.
I was on my way down to the vale, specifically llandow race course to watch other bikers race each other, to get there, I intended going via Cowbridge town.
My RD 350 was one of my favorite bike to ride, it looked the same as any other RD 350 except it was a American import, what are commonly called grey bikes, the only real difference that I could see on the bike, was the tail light which was round in shape, there did seem to be a little slight shading to the red/mauve paint on the tank compared to other 350`s I had seen zipping around, but I always put that down to the tank’s exposure to sunlight as this bike was never kept indoors, so cosmetically just the tail light was a different shape.
The odd thing about the bike which I never understood why, was that it had an extra 6th gear which was blanked off in the gearbox, and could not be used by the rider, there must have been some reason why, but I never found out why.
On my trip down to Cowbridge, I picked up Gaenor, my girlfriend first, she was in Wick village and then I double backed toward Cowbridge town, I made my way through the old town of Cowbridge and then on the outskirts where I just picked a lane at random to take me in the general direction that I wanted to go in, there was no rush, I would get where I was going when I get there.
The Yamaha RD 350 was a very nippy bike, It had excellent acceleration and was so light it was easy to throw around and change angles very quickly, the only draw back that I found riding the bike was that it was very light at the front end, which had a habit of lifting off the road when you accelerated hard, I found this to be a slight problem, because the front end was so easy to lift off the ground sometimes it made the bike a little erratic when accelerating had, I had to be very careful to keep on my line the bike tended to drift towards the on-coming traffic when the front end became light, this was a little disadvantages, it was far to easy to pop a wheelie, but overall the performance of the bike was excellent, the top speed would only be around 110 mph and that was only archived by laying on the tank, but by god it would get there quickly.
Its fuel consumption was a real big negative, and always an issue with me.
It was one of the reasons I bought a bigger four-stroke bike, the RD was not suited to long range trips.
Riding the RD 350 at low speeds was not easy and not speeding everywhere was a very difficult thing to do with this type of bike .
The bike still only returned an average of 30 mpg at the best of times, and it consumed two-stroke oil at an alarming rate.
I always needed to keep an eye on the level of petrol and oil in the tanks, it was surprising how quickly the petrol tank would empty.
There were more smiles per mile with this RD then any other bike I have ever owned.
Well anyway I chose this random lane to ride along, just outside Cowbridge town.
I was not too familiar with the side roads that filtered out of Cowbridge, there were plenty to choose from down this ancient part of Glamorgan.
To be honest I was riding to fast for a lane that I had never ridden on before, but there again on this bike I rode too fast everywhere I went.
I was ridding down a narrow lane with no white lines in the center, the road just wide enough for two cars to pass each other, and just missing each of their wing mirrors, the lane had high thick hedges and were very overgrown, as it was summertime and the trees and hedges were thick with new growth and this foliage blocked any view outside the line of the road.
I had no idea where I was or where I was going.
Just up ahead of me, I could see a tight bend going off to the right.
I was coming up to the blind bend to fast and needed to slow down rapidly. So I throttled off and cut my speed, as I entered the bend to my surprise, there in front of me was a very short section of straight road and then the faded white lines of a junction covered with loose gravel, all this came into view very quickly, and directly opposite the junction, only a road's width away was a curb with a short flat section of rough grass and then a little further on from the curbside, around six foot from the curb a grove of mature trees.
I thought “ O fuck “
I was still going too fast to stop at the junction.
I reacted as quickly and as fast as I possibly could, and immediately slammed my anchors on, I was going far too fast to stop in time.
This was not good.
I locked my back wheel up, I stood on the brake as hard as I could, I then applied my front brake, but I eased it off not to lose traction on the front end.
I was well aware of the build up of gravel at the junction and I did not want to hit the gravel and lose my front end.
All this happened in a nanosecond, I was so close to the junction, I knew that I could not stop in time.
I could feel my girlfriend gripping the side of my leather jacket as hard as she could.
She also knew what was happening.
I slid sideways across, at this point I had no real control of the bike, I was just a reluctant passenger on a death slide.
We slid helplessly past the junction, kicking up gravel everywhere and then continued onto the main road and eventually stopped inches away from the curb and the grove of trees opposite, and this where I slewed to a dead stop.
A cloud of blue smoke drifted past us as we sat there in the middle of a road, I was surrounded by the smell of burnt rubber and a pastel blue cloud, my heart was going ten times to the dozen.
I was sideways on the wrong side of the road with my front wheel pointing at the curb at a 45-degree angle.
Luckily for me there was no traffic on the road in any direction at the time, otherwise it would have been odds on that I would have been on the front of a bonnet of some car or stuck to the front grill like an old teddy bear on a passing lorry.
Once reality of my situation was apparent, and my brain had caught up with the events that just happened, I was in a very vulnerable position sitting in the road like I was, I tried to pull off to a safe place and then I found I was struggling to pull off, the bike was still ticking over, but in the madness of the situation I had pulled the clutch in automatically when I hit the brakes, so the bike did not stall on me.
I found I was still in 3rd gear.
So I quickly dropped down the gear box in to 1st gear, and pulled the bike back onto the correct side of the road, there were no pavements on both sides of the road, so I tucked myself in close to the curb to make myself less of a target.
Everything had happened so fast I did not have time to changed down through the gears.
I was to busy trying to brake in time to stop the bike.
As I parked up on the side of the road, My heart was pounding like mad, it was still going ten time to the dozen and had hardly slowed down, since we had stopped.
I sat on the bike and turned in the seat towards Gaenor and said ” wow, that was a fucking rush “, she punched me in the ribs and said “ you're a fucking idiot “ she was not happy.
I do appreciate that we were very lucky that day.
Very fucking lucky indeed.
( Photo 1 ) . This photo was taken in 2018, showing the junction up ahead, the foliage has been cut back a little since the early 80s, and who takes notice of Slow/Araf Graffiti written in the middle of the road, the main road i slid across is just passed the car you see waiting at the juction.
I knew if I had hit the opposite curb I would have lost control of the bike completely, and we would have most likely disappeared into the thick dark undergrowth of the wooded copes beyond, and then nobody would have been any wiser.
Unless my bike had hit a tree and bounced back and in sight of the road, nobody would have had any idea of where we had gone, and most likely we would not have been found until summer had come and gone and with the onset of winter with the trees losing their leaves and the undergrowth dying back to its roots, we would eventually be found wrapped around a tree.
Thinking how vulnerable we were back in the day while riding through remote rural country areas like this, if you were with a number of other people it would not be so bad, but if you were on your own, nobody would know where to start to look for you.
There were no mobile phones, and there was no way of calling for help, and even if someone knew where you were travelling too, there was no G.P.S. and no way to track your movements, so someone may know your destination, but would have had no idea what route you would be taking.
All this was never considered back in the day.
Gaenor climbed off the bike and said “ if you ride like that any further I’m walking home “.
So I promised her that I would ride slower for the rest of the trip, I didn't really want to repeat of just what happened.
I was just glad that I could ride away from that close call and with no damage to myself or Gaenor or the bike.
Once I had calmed down and my heart had settled down to its normal beat, I rode off towards LLandow race track, as luck had it, this was the road I needed to use to get where I was going, this time I rode along at a more sedate pace.
I lived to ride another day.
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Close Call # 2
The Milk-Float
I was on the morning shift, this meant I needed to be in work by 05:00 at the very latest, my job title at the time was a Technical Supervisor, one of my jobs was to prep the two departments for the coming day, which really meant that I had to get up early and switch everything on ready for the shift to start at 06:00 before everyone else came into work.
The Traffic was very light at this time in the morning.
Work was only three miles or so away, down at the base of the valley.
A five to ten-minute ride from my house to the Ofrex engineering, the factory I worked at in llangeinor.
I had mixed feelings about the place when I worked there, I loved and hated the place at the same time, I worked with many people from the Garw and the surrounding valleys of LLynfi and Ogmore, all the top bosss where English executive from other parts of the country mainly from over the bridge, and did not really mix with the local people, I spent 17 years working there and in the end I just hated it and then one day I walked into the office after 17 years, and said I have a months holiday owing to me and here’s my month notice.
I said goodbye, turned around and just walked out and never went back and then spent nine months travelling around Europe spending all my savings, which is another story.
Back to the subject of the story.
The ride down the valley never took me very long, this Yam RD had to be ridden fast, it demanded it.
There would be no point in owning this kind of bike if you didn’t like speed.
A quick turn of the throttle and you were gone literary in a puff of blue smoke.
The bike didn’t have a very high top end speed maybe 110 mph and that would be laying on the tank.
But by god it got there quickly.
It was a dry morning and this was just another ordinary days ride to work, I made my way down the twisty valley road.
I would see an occasional car coming in the opposite direction, but this was a very rare sight at this time in the morning.
I was approaching a section of road nearly at the bottom of the valley called ( HOT WELLS ).
( Photo 2 ) . HOT WELLS, looking down the valley, the milk float was parked up tight against the wall on the road below the farm house on the left side of the road, Note the iron railings on the right side.
The location of Hot Wells was just down from the village of Tylagwyn, as you leave Tylagwyn there is a short straight section of road that bends to the left after a few hundred yards.
From Hot wells, the Ofrex factory was only a couple of minutes away.
As you ride passed hot wells, you can look down onto the factory from the road.
The road down the valley was just wide enough for two buses to pass each other with very little room to spare, there would only be inches to spare as they drove passed each other, only just missing their mirrors as they travelled around the valley.
The steep mountain side was on your left and on your right was a single pavement that ran the entire length of the valley and beyond this also following the pavement up the valley were cast iron railings, and beyond the railings was a very steep drop to the valley floor and the Garw river some 100`s of feet below.
So I was on this section of road and heading into Hot Wells.
I came around the left hand bend at about 70-80 mph.
OK, I know the speed limit is 30 mph on this road, but what traffic would there be on the road at this time in the morning, apart from myself and maybe be the odd bus taking miners to the Ocean Colliery at the top of the valley or a car.
As I entered hot wells there in front of me was an electric powered milk float, the type you used to see delivering milk to your front door in the early morning back in the day, of course this was back in the day, and he was delivering milk.
As I say the road is narrow here and the milkman had parked the float close to the dry stone wall of the farm on my side of the road.
Completely blocking the left side.
I had no option but to overtake the milk float.
There was no way I could slow down in time to stop, and check if the road was clear before I would overtake, my only other option was to hit the vehicle head on if I stayed on the same line I was taking, and that would ruin his day and mine, I could not run off the road because of the metal railing fence and a huge drop down to the river, I didn’t think I would need to worry about the drop and the river, the cast iron railings would see to it, that I would stop dead and not go any further.
Ok, I was committed to overtaking a parked vehicle without knowing if there was anything coming up in the opposite direction with very little room to maneuver.
I could not see if anything was coming up from LLangeinor on the opposite side of the road, so I just hoped for the best and pulled out onto the wrong side of the road.
( Photo 3 ) . A typical milk float of the time of the story.
I sped past the float in seconds, nearly hitting ( Eddie the milk ) as the milkman was known as.
Eddie came from behind the float carrying a blue plastic milk crate full of gold top bottled milk and one orange juice.
As luck would have it, a car was coming up in the opposite direction at the same time, there were three vehicles on the road, myself, the milk float and the car, and we were all trying to be in the same space as each other at the same time.
The car was nearly on top of me, I literarily had a few seconds to react, so I swerved back onto my correct side of the road.
I missed the car by inches and only just squeezed past the milk float with even less space to spare, doing this maneuver at speed and at the angle I was at, I nearly rode up the side of the banking and into the hedge, but I luckily managed to straighten the bike up, it was not skill it was luck, mainly because the bike was so light and responsive it was easy to throw it around.
Back then I had very good reactions which saved me a number of times, if it was a bigger bike like my Rickman/Honda 750, I would have become one with the hedge.
After I managed to gain full control of the bike and had it back into a straight line again, I carried on down the road not looking back, I could hear the car blasting his horn at me.
I pulled into work and then just put the near miss down to experience, but this close call did teach me a lesson, not to assume there are no other vehicles on the road because it was early in the morning.
In the future every time, every time I approached this part of the road no matter whatever time of the day it was I would slow down and look out for the milk float or any other vehicle at this spot at Hot Wells.
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Close Call # 3
The Horse
I had another horrible experience at exactly the same spot, but this time not directly involving me.
It was around mid-day, I rode down the valley as I would normally would, maybe a little slower because the traffic had increased this time of the day.
I came upon a line of traffic just outside Tylagwyn on the short straight part of the road, which was very unusual as there were never any traffic jams.
All the cars were on stop, so I immediately assumed there must have been an accident of some kind further along the road, out of sight around the bend at Hot Wells or further down on llangeinor square.
The line of cars ran up to and around the upcoming left hand bend, I also noticed that nothing was coming up the valley on the opposite side of the road.
This could potentially be a big problem because at this location in the valley, there was only one road and if this was blocked for some reason nothing would be moving in or out of the valley.
I rode passed six cars, and then pulled up alongside one of the cars, it was a mark one Ford Escort.
I tapped the drivers window, I waited for him to manually roll the window down, and asked the driver if he knew what was going on.
I remember what type car it was for some bizarre reason, I find it odd that I remember the type of car and model has I have/had no interest whatsoever in cars, then or even now, they are just boxes with wheels, some are better designed then others, but still boxes with wheels.
This escort was painted a light blue with deep red seat covers with gold piping running along the seams and on his steering wheel, I remember he had a worn leopard skin cover wrapped around it, I remember at the time thinking that this guys colour choices are real fucked up, maybe because I did electronics in my job and I had 100% colour definition I could tell that the colours were, lets say questionable, maybe he didn’t see the same way I did, who knows.
He leaned out on to his door to talk to me, a stink of tobacco wafted out of the window, I could see he had a packet of Embassy number 10 on his dashboard, he also had one of those Perspex glass windshield that was fitted to the driver door on the side of the car.
I switched my engine off as the noise of the silencer was bouncing back off the car, and making it difficult to hear what he was saying with any clarity.
The driver said “ I think there has been an accident up ahead, nothing can get through or move, I haven’t heard an ambulance yet, we have been here for ages”.
I said “ thanks “.
I looked behind me, another five cars had joined the traffic jam and more were coming down the valley.
I started the bike by kicking it over and then slowly rode along the still halted traffic, I had to be careful at this point, I was getting closer to the bend, and if the traffic had started moving from the opposite direction, I had nowhere to go, all the cars in the jam had pulled up close to each other, there was no room for me to pull into, there was no room on the road for me and another car, I did have the option of mounting the pavement, so I kept going forward.
My intention was to find out what the nature of the accident was, and if the pavement was clear of debris and wreckage, and if there was a copper in attendance at the accident.
If there was a way through, I was taking it.
That’s one of the advantages of riding a bike, you can go around things and squeezes through tighter gaps instead of sitting around like a beached whale.
When I finally arrived at the front of the long line of cars, I could see what was causing the traffic jam.
There was a dead horse in the middle of the road, with a wrecked car nearby at a skew if angle blocking both sides of the road.
I pulled alongside the lead car and switched the bikes' engine off, I could see a little further on up the road sitting on the pavement, a girl of about 16 or 17 years old dressed in riding Gompers and a blue body warmer, she was being comforted by a couple of people who kneeling down by the side of her, and were leaning over her and trying to talk to her, the young girl was not paying attention to the two adults who were trying their best to confront her, she just kept staring at the dead horse in the middle of the road, and understandably she was crying her eyes out.
The traffic had started to build up on the road coming up from llangeinor, this accident was causing a real problem.
I overheard the girl tell the people around her, what had happened, there was no noise all the other cars had switched their engine off, the only sound that could be heard was the sobbing of the girl.
She said, the horse was playing up, something had spooked the horse, and she was having a hard time trying to control it.
It was dancing all over the road, and the car that was all smashed up had lost patience waiting for the horse to settles down and become calm, and the inpatient driver tried to gun the car past the spooked horse.
The horse did not understand what was going on and became spooked and the rider struggling to control with no luck, the horse was rolling its eyes and rearing up into the air, and then the horse stepped out in front of the on coming car.
Which resulted in the accident.
The rider didn’t seem to be hurt, but she looked very upset, the horse took the full damage from the collision with the car.
This accident was in exactly the same spot that I had the near miss with the milk float a year or so before.
The front of the car was crumpled up, the bonnet was mangled and the windscreen was completely gone with bits of glass everywhere.
The driver of the car was still sitting in the driver seat, just staring out of the glass-less windscreen into nowhere, he was obviously in shock.
A lady from one of the cars that came up the hill from LLangeinor had gotten out of her car, and was leaning into the drivers window trying to comfort him, but I don’t think he was listening, he just kept staring into nothing.
The accident had happened only short time earlier, ten to fifteen minutes before I arrived at the scene, and the people at the scene were waiting for the ambulance and the police to turn up, there was no sign of them yet.
( Photo 4 ) . Looking down the valley, with Hot Wells on the left side.
The only thing that stopped me passing this carnage was the horses blood, it had completely covered the road.
In all honesty I would not have believed how much blood there was inside this animal.
There as so much of it, it ran down the gutter like a small stream.
It is not a sight I would want to see again, I am finding it hard to describe the event into much detail, as this story would sound more like a horror story than one about riding a bike.
After a little while waiting, I decided to go, there was no sign of the ambulance or the police, and I could not mount the pavement because of the crying girl rider, and the people trying to comfort her, so I would have to ride through the stream of blood.
The way the horse was laying in the road and with the angle of the car, I would need to Zig Zag around them to get past the carnage.
So, I started the RD by kicking the bike over with the kick-start and slowly pulled off.
I took it slow, but it didn’t seem to help, the blood splashed out over everything, I put my feet up on the engine like I would have done if I was riding through a small stream or a river ford.
The blood sprayed out all over the people on the pavement including the girl who was eye level with the spray because of the way she was sitting with her back to the railings, she took the spray of blood straight into her face, the people on the pavement were covered in the mist of horse blood, and all the cars had a share as I passed them by.
It shot out from under my tires like as if I was watering flowers, I did get shouted at, people were not happy.
The girl rider must have looked like sissy spacek from the film " carrie " after i rode passed.
I just kept going, I carried on and rode down the hill without looking back.
As I road down to Brynmenyn, the ambulance passed me on the way up, siren blasting and blue lights flashing, a little on the late side, but better late then never.
It took me almost two weeks to completely remove all the blood off the bike.
It was a horrible event to witness and thank god, I have never seen anything like that since ( Except for the herd of cows that were hit by a train between Brackla and Coychurch village, this scene looked like an open air slaughterhouse, it was impossible to tell how may cows there were in total, with all the legs and heads scattered everywhere. ) to be honest that wasn’t very nice to see either.
But even now if I pass this spot at Hot Wells, the horse and the milk float always come to mind.
It just reminds you how dangerous the roads can be.
( Photo 5 ) My Yamaha RD 350, with my dog FFella in Pontycymmer.