On the
morning of Friday May 27th 2016 David got up at 0400 hours ready for
an early start at 0445 hours for a funeral in Sutton Coldfield. The route is
well tried and David often uses the A46 around Bath,
up into Stroud, the A38 around Gloucester to Tewkesbury and rejoining the A46 to Oversley Mill Service
at Alcester, normally David’s first stop.
David put on
the computer for his wife to check the roads whilst he took a shower. Whilst
David was having his breakfast his wife shouted, ‘The A46 around Bath is closed for Night
Tarmac Laying and won’t reopen until 0700 hours.’ This caused David to have a
quick change of strategy. In recent years David has always used the ‘Gloucester
route’, which he has christened The West Side Story, because it is easier to
get vehicles around the Leyland Beaver due to the high incidence of dual
carriageways and three lane roads, wide enough to get vehicles three abreast.
In addition, Oversley Mill Services on the A46 near Alcester have excellent
toilet facilities. David is well known to the members of staff who allow him to
park the Leyland Beaver whilst he takes a 45 minute rest break. A well stocked
shop, with a good supply of newspapers and magazines is also next door to a
recently built McDonald’s restaurant.
David set out
from Bradford-on-Avon on the back road to Corsham, evaluating how he could cut
back and join the A46 north of the road works, however, the burning thought in
David’s mind was that must arrive at Sutton Coldfield by 1000 hours. As he
approached Chippenham David thought it would be beneficial to abandon the A46
strategy and go via the old Fosse
Way, which David had used in the infancy of
Vintage Lorry Funerals. The high incidence of double white lines, lack of any
dual carriageway and limited three lane roads caused David to review this route
in 2006. In addition there are no toilet facilities on the Fosse Way apart from Tesco at
Stow-on-the-Wold which opens at 0600 hours. However, in this emergency
situation it was a case of needs must and David crossed the M4 and headed for
Cirencester.
David doesn’t
use a Sat Nav, he has a list of road numbers and landmarks to watch out for,
drawn with coloured pencils, on the back of an envelope attached with a bull
clip to a Road Atlas which lies across the engine cover. The only problem was
that the route plan in front of him was for the A46, not the Fosse Way, so David just went with road
sense established over many years and followed the signs.
At 0600 hours
David reached Cirencester and saw hardly anyone on the road. The first part of
the road to Stow-on-the-Wold involves 3 very steep hills, including the
notorious Fossebridge. The 1950 Leyland Beaver is excellent on hills and on the
two lanes uphill section of Fossebridge a large modern day articulated vehicle
pulled out, attempted to overtake but couldn’t catch the Leyland Beaver which
was cruising up the steep slope at 25 miles per hour in top gear. At the brow
of the hill David slowed down and waved the articulated vehicle past and the
Driver’s Mate, sitting in the passenger seat, put up two thumbs signifying that
both men in the modern lorry were in awe of the performance of the 66 year old
vintage vehicle.
The steep
down hill sections on the Fosse
Way enabled the Leyland Beaver to achieve 42 miles
per hour down the slope and this uplifted the average speed. In addition the
traffic lights in Stow-on-the-Wold and Moreton-in-Marsh are set on a short
timescale change so David was never stopped for long. Any cars that came up
behind the Leyland Beaver were driven by experienced drivers who came past the
vintage lorry as soon as David signified that the road was clear up ahead.
David was
surprised at the progress he was making having reached in 2.5 hours, Halford,
where the road splits and the original Fosse Way becomes the B4455 and goes
through to Leicester or Ratae Corieltauvorum as it was in Roman times. In 3
hours he had just left the A46 just south of Warwick, which was becoming crowded with rush
hours traffic, joined the A4177 and reached Balsall Common. David looked at the
Smiths Speedometer and realised that he had travelled 90 miles, averaging 30
miles per hour, which was excellent for a lorry with a top speed of 32 miles
per hour on level roads. If David had gone via his preferred A46 route in 3
hours he would have only got to Oversley Mill Services and travelled 80 miles.
The A4177
leads onto the A452, which is mainly dual carriageway and follows the M6
closely before cutting north towards Brownhills. The traffic was busy on the M6
but light on the A452. David took the A5127 to Sutton Coldfield and landed at
the Funeral Directors at 0900 hours, 4 hours door to door, no stops, saving an
hour on the A46 route.
As David
waited for the Funeral Director to open, he bought a paper, sipped his coffee
and ate his Toffee Crisp. He thought that despite the shock that he had at 0400
hours things hadn’t worked out so bad. A location that had been felt to have
been at the extreme of David’s 5 hour driving time to go there and back in a
day, was reached with one hour spare! Thus if the Fosse way could be used for
east Birmingham and beyond then it may be
possible to undertake Lichfield or Leicester
on a there and back basis if the funeral was booked for the afternoon.
This was an
example of how sometimes events don’t turn out as bad as people dread or that
every cloud has silver lining.
The funeral
was conducted by a young Funeral Director called Leon and David wasn’t sure how to
spell his name so he asked if it was spelt the same way as Leon Russell, who
wrote Delta Lady for Joe Cocker. Well young Leon hadn’t heard of either
gentleman! When Leon was
paging the cortege at Streetly Crematorium, it became evident to David that Leon
was going the wrong way around the system but there was no discreet way to warn
him. Sounding the horn would have been inappropriate and David didn’t want to
ruin Leon’s
confidence so the lorry and the following limousine ended up the wrong way in
the porte cochere. Being 30 minutes early and the wrong way round, nothing
could get much worse for Leon, who was crestfallen. Leon
explained to David that this was the first time he had been to Streetly
Crematorium and David told him that Leon Russell’s most famous song was
Stranger in a Strange Land. Leon said that the song described
perfectly how he felt.
Whilst the
service was taking place David drove the wrong way into the car park, turned
the vintage lorry and parked in the corner. Whilst he was having his sandwich
some mourner for the next funeral parked his 4 x4 in front of the Leyland
Beaver blocking it from leaving the car park. David got out of the cab and
asked the person not to leave his vehicle in that position, using a gentle,
polite and persuasive tone. In David’s experience people in grief, late for a
funeral can do silly things, abandoning their cars with no thoughts of anyone
else’s need but their own.
Coming home
David thought he would use the Fosse
Way again but this turned out to be a bad
decision. This was the Friday before a Bank Holiday Monday and a lot of people
were travelling to the West Country and using the Fosse Way. The quick-fire traffic lights
in Moreton-in-Marsh and Stow-on-the-Wold, which were ideal at 0630 hours not
holding up minimal traffic, were a nightmare at 1630 hours with only small
batches of a large volume of traffic being let through and the remainder being
held back. This created an ever increasing length of stationary traffic
approximately a mile outside of each town. The biggest problem was caused by
the Tesco traffic lights with local people having completed their weekly
shopping forcing their way into the queuing traffic.
It also
wasn’t easy to get cars past the vintage lorry has a high preponderance of cars
with caravans could not overtake quick enough before the next oncoming vehicle
arrived. Coming towards Bourton-on-the-Water David spotted Bernard Saunders and
his Daughter working on cars outside their workshop. David piped his horn and
they waved back. David has known the Saunders family for over 15 years and he
always rings them if he needs any advice on road conditions in their area.
The journey home took 6 hours, so David noted in his
Lessons Learnt List that the Fosse
Way is not always the answer and selected use in
the future should be part of the Vintage Lorry Funerals operating plan. Also a
road check should be made the day before the funeral not on the morning of the
funeral.
