THE WHEEL AND THE M4.

( Photo 1 ) . A typical ride home from a rally, when the motorways are not chocked with traffic, this photo was taken by Wobble coming back from the Drunken Bear rally, I am on the left with Big Roy and Shades at the front.

THE WHEEL AND THE M4

CHAPTER 67

EARLY 80`s

A group of us were riding back from (The behind the Vine rally), which one I am not sure about, it would have been in the first part of the 1980`s, the rally was held in Essex near a place called Braintree.

There were ten or more bikes riding back at the same time, it was a long ride for us, a 3- 4 hour journey to get back to Wales, we had been partying all weekend and were all eager to get home, and get some sleep and try and get ourselves sorted for the following working week, it was always slow-going when we were heading home from a rally, we were normally wet, very tired and mostly hungover from the weekends activities.

When we travelled through the towns and villages, we always had an issue when we came across the one-way systems in some towns, they always seem to lead us into the wrong direction of where we wanted to go, the numerous traffic lights and some very strange filter systems on some of the roundabouts, and the dedicated bus lanes, always puzzled us, which at the time we only found these kinds of road systems in England, we did not seem to need them in Wales until much later when the small Welsh towns expanded, nowa days these road systems are everywhere to deal with the increased number of vehicles that are now using the roads.

It was easier to stay together, so we could all get lost together, this kind of stopping and starting in towns was a right pain.

When we all pulled up at a set of traffic lights in the middle of a some small town, there we would always get strange looks off the people on the streets, all the bikes would be covered in sticky mud, our gear, the leather jackets and denim cut-offs also covered with the same sticky brown mud, the camping gear bungee’d down on any spare space on the bike, they too would be covered with the same brown wet earth, the noise of all the exhausts notes bouncing off the shop windows and drowning out any passing conversations was always a head turner, why motorcycle exhausts were called silencers I don’t know, there was nothing silent about them.

The people passing by on the nearby pavements would always turn their heads towards the noise that the many exhausts were putting out, the sound would vibrate off the parked cars and the buildings, this happened in all the small towns we rode through, many of the bikes had a very different exhaust fitted that went through the M.O.T, it was a great sound, and watching the disapproving looks of the pedestrians always put a smile on my face, not that anyone could see, I always rode with a Scarfe pulled up over my face, up to and just below my eyes, I had a red and white scarf for many years that went everywhere with me.

Being in the UK, it was always a 50/50 chance that it would rain on a rally weekend, even in the summertime, the wettest rally I had ever been on was the 1980 Fools rally, I know I have mentioned this rally before and have written its own story blog (THE FOOLS RALLY 1980, CHAPTER 59), but its worth mentioning twice, I remember on the second day of the rally, everyone had to help to get the bikes out of the churned up muddy rally field, one of the guys had to ride on the bike while the others pushed it out through the one gate entrance and back onto the tarmacked single lane that ran past the rally site, this was necessary with every single bike on the rally field.

Well anyway back to the actual blog, we were all travelling back on the motorway, not sure which one it was now, it could have been the M4, M5 M50 or the M6, it could have been anyone of them, for the sake of a title for this story it's going to be the M4, motorways all look the same, one long boring road with the occasional over head bridge, after a while as you ride along you count the miles to the next junction or service station, and when you pass the off ramp junction to these over priced pit stops, you start counting the miles to the next junction with only the vibration of your bike and the constant hum of your engine droning out one long note for miles upon miles.

Once on the motorway, we would ride as a loose pack, but trying to stay close enough not to get separated, this would all depend on how heavy the traffic was at the time and if there were any road works, which seem to be never ending.

( Photo 2 ) . A motorway sign showing how a contra flow system works.

On this occasion we came across a set of road works that seem to go on forever, our group was separated by a contraflow, the traffic cones had directed half our group from the lane we were on which was the westward bound side of the motorway, some of us was diverted to the fast lane onto the eastward bound side, I ended up facing on-coming traffic with no barrier, but a series of spaced out traffic cones, with 38 tonne trucks rumbling past you with what seem like inches away.

Like I say this diversion went on for miles.

Initially the traffic in front of us, started to slow down and bunch up, because of the traffic slowing down the other road users mainly large lorries started changing lanes and splitting up our group, the lorries in the slow lane were directed to move into the middle and fast lane by an extensive amount traffic cones shutting down the hard shoulder and the slow lane from all traffic, we came upon the diversion very quickly suddenly there were traffic cones everywhere directing us into a chicane which resulted half our group were on different parts of the motorway, the large lorry drivers sitting high up in their cabs could see the diversion up ahead from a distance, and most likely the CB radios they all had fitted in their cabs had informed them of the reduction of the lanes from 3 to 2 lanes a long time before we knew about the problem, and that was why they all indicated to pull into the two remaining lanes available to them, the speed limit was reduced from 70 mph to around 30-40 mph, this is how I ended up on going down the wrong way in fast lane on the eastbound side of the motorway.

Everything was rolling along with no problems, but very slowly both sides of the motorway were now chock-a-block with slow moving traffic, I was running alone side Simon Batey, and his twin brother Joss also PJ, all in one line who just happen to be on the other side of the metal motorway barrier, I could see PJ right up behind Simons bike, he was slipstreaming Simon, he was so close to Simons back wheel, no exaggeration, that he was literary an inch or to from nudging the back of Simons bike, if Simon had to stop quickly PJ and Simon would have ended up going arss over tit and sliding up the road, there was no way PJ could have reacted in time to stop himself running into Simon, how this pending disaster didn’t happen I will never know, PJ was taking a hell of a risk just to save some petrol.

Directly behind PJ was a long family estate car towing a two wheeled trailer, that was loaded down with camping gear with a green tarpaulin flapping in the wind.

The traffic on the other side of the barrier started to move a little faster than the lane I was in, so the batey twins and PJ where now a little ahead of me.

The motorway on both sides was picking up the pace a little, we were all now travelling at around 40 mph, the estate car with the trailer was just a little ahead of me maybe around 3 meters away, so what happened next I had a very good view of.

The trailer looked old and well-used, and possibly home made, it had from what I could see the rear axel of a car for the set of wheels with makeshift wooden panels bolted to angle iron struts for the sides, the wooden panels were green with mould and had grass growing out from under the base of the trailer.

I noticed that the wheel nearest to me was wobbling dramatically, and then without warning the wheel detached itself from the trailer axel and ran alongside of the trailer for a few moments, surprisingly the trailer stayed up right, missing a wheel did not seem to change the position of the trailer.

The driver of the estate car did not seem to be aware that he had just lost a wheel, the wheel started to lose momentum and fall behind the trailer by a meter or so and then suddenly the wheel leaped into the air, the wheel must have hit something in its path which propelled the wheel high into the air, it went straight up over the estate car and bounced just behind PJ, who was totally unaware of the rouge wheel, it then bounced once again over the central metal barrier and landed down in the lane I was in, just in front of me in-between the gap I had with four other bikes in front of me, the wheel then kind of skipped across the eastbound part of the motorway and then ran up the side of the earth banking where it ran out of energy and just fell over and just lay there stressed and exhausted.

Surprisingly the rouge tire missed all the traffic on its journey across the motorway lanes, it bounced between the moving cars and most divers were totally unaware that the wheel had just missed them.

How it missed everyone on a busy motorway is a mystery to me and possibly should be labelled as a miracle as the motorway was well crowded with all types of vehicles.

After watching the tyre making its miraculous safe journey across the motorway I turned my attention to the estate car towing the now one wheeled trailer, I sounded my horn repeatedly to draw the diver's attention to me, all the other road users were looking at me with puzzled looks on their faces, eventually the diver of the estate car turned his head toward me, I pointed towards his trailer, trying to inform him of his missing wheel, the trailer was still upright travelling behind with no problems, both lines of traffic was rolling on at around 40 mph, the driver looked at me and mouthed something like (FUCK OFF) which I could not hear over the noise of the traffic, and gave me the middle finger, I thought, oh well it's your loss, I did try.

The contra flow diversion came to an end, and myself and the other bikes joined back up with the westbound bikes, they were around a mile up ahead of us, but we caught up pretty quickly.

Normally when we come back from a rally we would arrange to stop off at one of the motorway service station on the way back home, when we pulled into the motorway station, I asked the guys if they noticed the bouncing trailer wheel, no-one had seen anything, mainly because I was tail end Charlie and everyone else was forward of me on the motorway, some of them were wondering why I was sounding my horn so much.

I think everyone on that part of the motorway that day were very lucky, it could have been disastrous, happily everyone arrived home safely, maybe except the estate diver, I think he may have had a bit of a problem when he pulled off the motorway and negotiated the first roundabout he came too.