By Sam Smith
Published: February 21, 2008
Updated: October 27, 2008 PrintEmail
2) Julie Cycling
One foot on the ground Julie waits for a break in the traffic.
Although it is supposed to be a thirty mile per hour limit, and it is flat here and she can see the cars coming, their speed is deceptive.
A large silver van goes by on the other side. In the queue coming from town there is nothing behind the maroon car. She launches herself across the road and, before she knows it, she is sat comfortably upon the saddle.
That junction — of Parkway and Westonzoyland Road — with the cars coming so fast around the looping bend and not looking, often makes her nervous. But what frightens her, what she dreads most when she comes this way, what she sometimes dreams about with horrific clarity, is cycling over the railway bridge.
Some days, especially when it's been windy, she has gone up to the Bath Road and into town that way, even though — with the extra distance and all the traffic lights — it can put fifteen minutes on her journey. And there too is a stone bridge on a slant to the road, which narrows, and the bridge has rounded kerbstones at its base which look as if they've been set there as a cycle trap. At least there, though, she can wheel her bike along the pavement. But, going that way, she also has to ride into the smell of the cellophane factory. So she comes this way.
The iron railway bridge is guarded by two second world war pill boxes, one of red brick, one of bleached and blackened concrete. The odd thing about her fear is that, coming home from town, although the same conditions prevail, the iron bridge doesn't scare her half as much. She thinks, she told Paul, it's because coming from town she can see open land ahead of her; whereas going in to town, squeezed in between the riveted panels of the bridge, and with all those small dark brick houses squashed together below her, she feels that there is no escape; that, should she be hit, she will be thrown to the rusty rails.
On the long incline up to the bridge her bum rises slightly off the saddle. Cars are coming rushing through on the other side like cattle being pushed from a stall. She grips the handlebars as she strains up the last of the slope. At her request Paul took the 3 speed gears off her bike. In fraught conditions such as these they are a distraction she doesn't need.
On reaching the level part of the bridge she hears a lorry behind her.
The bridge allows room enough only for two vehicles side by side. Cyclists cannot be overtaken. For the length of the bridge, therefore, the lorry growls along behind her. She can feel it above and behind her, its chrome bumpers pressing down on her small back wheel, its diesel breath moistly spotting her thin neck, the lorry driver hating her.
So she keeps rigidly straight, defying comment, can feel the lorry's vibrations being transmitted ahead of her along the bridge and coming up through her pneumatic tyres. She presses harder on the pedals, reaches the end of the bridge and swoops down into the bend between the houses.
Her increase in speed didn't give the lorry sufficient opportunity to overtake her; and now she is riding alongside a line of parked cars and the lorry's behind her again.
The parked cars end and she drops in towards the pavement. The lorry, a large refrigerated van with two engines, rumbles past her. The driver doesn't look at Julie.
The shops and front doors of the houses here open onto the pavement. The lorry stops behind some cars at the traffic lights. Julie goes between the lorry and the pavement, dodges out around some plastic rubbish sacks, slips along the inside of a line of cars... she feels she has the legitimate advantage over cars here. The lights turn to amber, go to green as she reaches them
Julie used to turn left here into Cranleigh Gardens, cycle under the chestnut trees, but they made it One Way. Now she has to go up to the dual carriageway. Because it's wider, though, she feels safer; and the only obstacle after that is the lido roundabout. And the traffic is slower there, so it's just a matter of picking her moment.
commentary .... Self-evidently, given our closeness, I know what Julie thought, what Julie feared. Because Julie and I used to talk. Talking was the mainstay of our relationship. In Bridgwater that made us untypical.
True Stories
On May 9th 1985, while driving in excess of 55 mph, Alan Stratford, driver of a 5 year old Talbot, was in collision with 55 year old cyclist David Cavill. The accident happened near the Greenway garage between Bridgwatar and Cannington. Alan Stratford, an engineer at Hinkley Point nuclear power station, said,
"...I saw him trying to cross the road. I thought he'd stop. When I realised he wasn't going to I pressed the brakes and horn and tried to steer away. I thought he'd stop, but it was all so fast..."
On May 13th 1985 David Cavill died from injuries received in the accident.
In May 1986 2,700 Chinese grass carp were put into the Taunton-Bridgwater canal between Kings Lock and Standard Lock at North Newton. A Chinese grass carp can eat its own weight of weed each day. The British Waterways Board were hoping that the fish would clear the canal of weed faster than men with cutters.
In September 1989 Stephen Goodchild of Wellington Road, Bridgwater, was fined £50, with £21 costs, for being in possession of 5½ grams of cannabis. Twenty three year old Stephen Goodchild said that the cannabis had been for his own use.
In May 1990 a brick was thrown at a train from the Bath Road bridge in Bridgwater. The brick went through the co-driver's side window of the express parcel train from Plymouth as it was passing through Bridgwater on its way to Newcastle. The train driver, Ken Willams of Plymouth, said,
"Luckily there is no co-driver on that journey. So nobody was injured."
