Like summer freckles, blue skies and warm days, brings out swarms of motor bikes to our beautiful countryside
Our squirmy twisty roads are the big attraction, with some 80+ bends in under seven miles; apparently we are part of a ‘must do’ challenging circuit of roads that you aspire too. I can see the appeal; challenging your skills, man and machine against the terrain, it must be very adrenaline fuelled; a heightened sense of awareness, making you see and hear more acutely, making you feel more alive; a bit of a buzz; an escape from the day to day grind of work, away from all your worries.
I have a suspicion that most of you, are of, well, how can I put this, you are not as young as you once were; but it is difficult to tell when you are kitted out like Darth Vader. Born again bikers, you may well have had a mere ‘Honda 50′ back in the 1970’s when David Essex was singing of his ‘Silver Dream Machine’ (and Smoochie will be pleased to hear, he still is) but now you are back, with a big flash bike.
Your feeling good and looking good, so long as you stay astride your 1000cc bike (humm, that may be a Freudian observation) but when you get off your bikes at the pub; your saggy bottomed leathers are revealed. (Can’t they put Lycra in bike leathers? You look like you have a wet terry nappy slung around you backside; it’s not a good look.) What I can see however is that your leathers are a sophisticated (and no doubt expensive) bit of kit; padded and reinforced in all the right places. But there is a weak point; your neck, the vital link between head and torso, it looks vulnerable, your appearance is almost ant like. It is a sad fact (and its not unique to our area,) that despite much effort by lobby groups similar to ‘Shinysideup’, a lot of you will be involved in accidents.(My own pet theory is, that aside from speed, the weight of your ‘middle age spread’ affects your centre of gravity as you’ push it’ just a smidge to far into the bends.)
Now our counties finest in the emergency services will come, if they are needed (I am sure they would rather be leaning over the station pool table than you; but hey, it’s what they are paid for.) and save your life if they can; or maybe there will be nothing that they can do, but just pick up the pieces. If that’s the case, in a day or two, the wind, sun and summers storms will have scoured away the stains and all there will be left to see of your day out in the hills are shrines of fading flowers at the side of the road.
I have but one request, if you are going to loose control of your bike, drift with it, across the carriage way and smash in to an oncoming car and then die at the scene. Please don’t let it be my mates car you hit; she really can do without the grief.
24/06/06 The Observer news paper high lights the north- south divide in road accidents citing the dangers on ‘hilly twisty roads’
Uphilldowndale 
Your poor friend. That must have been such an awful shock for her.
As sad as this topic is, I liked the bit about the saggy trousers; I thought that was funny 🙂
May there was more than one post in that!
I know the feeling with regards to “rural” roads and bikers.
I live in Shropshire, and most of the county is only accessible by windy roads. I say roads, but half of them are no better than small lanes! And yep, we get loads of motorbike fatalies. And most of them are the sunday bikers – the middle aged men that you describe who only ride a motorbike at the weekend.
What I don’t understand is why the law permits this idiocry. I know that they’ve got the entitlement on the license, which is why they can get away with it legally. But it’s kinda stupid to give these people all of these entitlements without any extra training!
For example, I’m 21. That means that I don’t have C1 or D1 entitlements on my license. If I wanted them, it would cost me about £1000. Whereas people who passed their test 10 years ago have them by default, and with no extra training! I doubt the knowledge you need to drive a C1/D1 classification of vehicle just comes with age…
Well, that’s my short rant over!
Regards
Nick
http://nickhough.blogspot.com
I hadn’t thought about that, or just how much it costs, ekk; not a cheap hobby then!
Our local police do ‘stalk the area’ and they have put speed restrictions in place. When I was looking for a safe place to stop and take a photograph for this post I became very aware just how many warning signs are on these roads, pre mile there must be as many as on an urban Rd.
We have the ‘yoda on wheels’ phenomena here, too.
I watch them speed by and think to meself:
“Boy! It takes a strong man to wear cow, dunnit?”
But what if it were a sheep rather than a cow, what a mental image that conjures a big hairy a***d biker would look so cute in lambs wool
Not a cheap hobby, no! And it’s not just those of us in St John, etc that are affected. I know a colleague of mine from St John Oxfordshire applied to the Ambulance Service to become a trainee Technician a few years ago. He too didn’t have C1 or D1, and they said that he would have to pay for that out of his own pocket even before they considered his application…
So you end up paying for it yourself, and there’s no guarantee of it ever being helpful to you!
In a way, I agree that you should have to do post-test training to get your C1/D1 entitlement (I’m sorry, but a lot of older driver are frankly s**t!), but I don’t think that it should be that expensive. Hopefully in a few years the price will drop – at the moment, there’s not so many C1/D1 driving instructors, so they can all afford to put their prices up 😉
Oh, and as for the sheep on wheels – kinda worrying, frankly!
Regards
Nick
http://nickhough.blogspot.com
I have added a link to the post, there is a report in today Observer news paper about this very topic.
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