Motoring with the Llew

During my youth in the Bont, we had an interesting selection of cars, I had a Hillman Avenger, Dai Bone had an Austin Allegro estate, Steve Davies had a Mark 1 Ford Escort, Phil had a Renault 5, and John Llewellyn had a Morris Traveller in black.

John had not long passed his test and managed to put out every street light by his house within a few hours of getting his driving licence. There was a period when he once put the Morris through the same section of hedgerow 3 times in as many weeks due to some overly optimistic cornering.

This time we were going somewhere in Steve's Escort, I can't remember where or why but it involved driving up some of the back roads outside of the Bont, John was going to follow on later that night. As we travelled along the road, we felt the handling of the car go a bit funny. We stopped and one of the tyres was flat. "No problem" we said to Steve," just get the jack out"."Ah" he said, "the jack is back at the house". We then suggested that we lift the car and he could put the new wheel on. The only really problem with this idea was that the spare wheel happened to be by the side of the jack at home.

Oh well never mind, we can stay in the car till John turns up and then go home which is what we did.

As the sun rose some 8 hours later to a glorious morning, we heard the sound of the Morris coming towards us. We removed the wheel from the car, put it in the Morris and set off for a tyre repair place. John decided to take a short cut and on the section of road he used there was a hump back bridge. I should point out that I was sitting in the rear of the car and the seats were folded down.

There were no health and safety wombles in those days and the long sharp bits of metal that were used to hold the seats in place just stuck out with no protective cover on them.

We hit the bridge at about Warp 3 and became airborne, at about this time the back doors of the car flew open and I was floating about a foot above the floor of the car. The car returned to earth and thankfully one of the sharp bits of metal sunk itself into my back and stopped me flying out of the back door. The Morris shot under a bridge with airhorns playing Lilly Marlene and John swung the car round for another go at the bridge.

For some reason I had the urge to commit an act of violence upon him, but as I was currently writhing around in agony in the rear of a Morris Traveller whose back doors were open I decided it was best not too.

  ThankfullyJohn decided not to attempt to leap the bridge again, we got the tyre repaired and made our way home.

There are many more tales to tell of the Llew as he was called and how he eventually managed to get a driving ban. These will be the subject of a future ramble.