PATIO

CHAPTER 45

PATIO

Late 70s — early 80s

There has been a rumor that as been circulating around the South Wales area, principally in the biking community about an ordinary family patio.

The basis’s for this rumor is all directed at a certain patio that lies in a small quite welsh valley that is off the main routes of most people in Wales.

This little valley is isolated from the rest of the world, because there is only one road in and the same road circles around the side of the steep sides of the valley hugging the side of the mountain and turns back around until you are back were you started at the base of the valley at a village called LLangeinor.

If you have no reason to go up into the valley, the only time you will be reminded of its existence is when you see a road sign indicating in what direction it lies.

The above mentioned patio is just an ordinary unremarkable patio that looks the same as another that you may have come across in late 70s early 80s with its multicolored crazy paving slabs that look as if someone had broken them up with a sledge hammer, previously to laying them.

My mother was having some building work done to our house and the patio was part of the building work being done.

So I had orders to clear the garden of nonessential bike parts to clear room to give the builders access, my mother never objected to me having a number of bikes scattered around the garden even if they were randomly placed in area with no apparent reason for them being there, so for an easier life, i followed my mothers instructions and tidy`d the garden up a little, after watching the builder begin work on the Patio, I had an idea that the foundations of this soon to be constructed patio was a convenient place to get rid of most of my unwanted parts.

( Photo 1 ) . A patio very much like this one.

BUT.

Beneath the odd shaped coloured concrete slabs and the concrete base foundation there is something special hidden away.

To a number of certain type of people this patio is a veritable treasure trove.

The patio was constructed during the very late 1970s maybe early 80s and in it’s foundations buried among the rubble that was used to build up the level to a flat surface are parts from many different British motorcycles.

( 95% off all valley gardens are sloping at a very acute angle, as a majority of the houses are mostly built on the side of the mountain, so leveling off a Patio was very important unless you wanted to build a slide).

The base of this patio is mostly made up of parts taken from motorbikes of various description from a selection of well known British manufactures and models.

This random metal in-fill is dominated with what are regarded as classic motorcycles and are sort after by collectors nowa days.

The patio is hiding in its dark cold tomb, B.S.A. Bantam’s of the D5 — D7 model range and various other bits of the same model of bike.

The debris in the pit was made up from engine parts, frames, numerous wheels, squarish black baker-light batteries cases and tin work, which mainly consist of side panels and mud guards and a couple of headlights Nacelle’s etc, but no clocks, speedo’s always escaped the scrap pile there was always a market for instrument clocks even if they were not in working order.

The bantams were not alone in this makeshift grave, because many of their British cousins also joined them.

Namely :-

At lest one Francis Barnett.

More than one James Cadet.

Numerous Velocette engine parts of all description.

And at lest one Triumph Tiger Cub, minus it's petrol tank, the tank was being used on an older British bike called a Greeves 250cc that had no tank or seat when i obtained it, it was payment for painting a fence for a neighbour, the engine ran but there was very little else on the bike except for the frame, engine and wheels which had no tiers fitted, this type of bike nowa days, is worth a small fortune.

There was also a selection of Villers engine odds and ends.

It didn`t end there numerous Matchless and Royal Enfield bits and pieces, and a sprinkling of B.S.A. C15 and Panther M20 engine parts and possibly the scat remains of an Italian Scooter of some type.

I remember the scooter was a very odd bike it was red in colour and it was necessary to sit on the scooters seat for the thing to start and engage the clutch, ( well, i think it did, it was long time ago ).

Among all this you would also find tanks from a various models, including a square B.S.A. Bantam fiberglass racing tank in red.

All of the afor mentioned items are all buried beneath a thick layer of hardened concrete and have been there now for over 40 years, so god knows what state they are in and to be honest they had, had their day back then, and were surplus to requirements.

All the above bikes would have been cannibalized to make one good bike to use on the mountain, the bikes would be stripped of all nonsensical cosmetic items like clocks, side panels, etc to make Them lighter and for easy maintenance when they broke down, which they did quite often.

I can remember one bike which started off as a B.S.A bantam D5, ended up with a Francis Barnett rear wheel, the fork legs came from a D7 bantam and finished off with a 500 cc matchless tank that was held on with a rope and it had a seat from a scooter which was again tied down with rope, if the parts did not fit, we would alter them to make them fit in one way or another.

( Photo 2 ) The red B.S.A. fiberglass Bantam tank is directly behind the B.S.A. Starfire, if i had my way that piece of blue crap would have been put under the patio with all the other bits.

This patio or it’s contents may not be of any great interest to any contemporary archaeologist as this time capsule is defiantly not a long dead Pharaohs tomb or a Viking burial mound that would draw any significant attention.

But in a thousand years time when all combustion engines have been removed from the surface of the earth and these engines are fading memories of the past and have been air brushed from history by the ever-increasing nappy wearing eco-warrior snowflakes that are now populating the planet, the only place you will be able to view one of these smelly, noisy, air polluting chaotic machines will be in a museum behind a thick air tight glass vacuum display case.

But there will be always be a part of Wales holding onto a hidden cache of exiled rusty history from a bygone age.