Looking over my shoulder

I told Jules that as long as the wind had dropped by the morning I’d drive over to see her. It’s not that I’m a nervous driver or anything, it’s just the road I needed to take, the A66, had been closed for the best part of the day thanks to Storm Amy. Stretches of the road, particularly across Bowes Moor, are so exposed that there’s nowhere to hide from anything that nature cares to chuck at you. It’s high, flat and open and the wind can rage across without meeting any resistance. And when it does come up against something, like a high-sided vehicle that hasn’t heeded traffic warnings, it likes to flip them over; like a petulant child losing at Scrabble who can’t bear any letters be left on the board.

But the A66 is a tricky road, with or without storms. Disarmingly, it cuts through breathtaking scenery, lulls you into a false sense of security. I mean, you wouldn’t join it and think, ‘woah, this looks like a killer road’. Although, if you’re entering it from a junction, say the one at the top of Gilling West bank, you’ve got to have your eyes peeled, and I mean really peeled, for traffic haring down the hill from your right. That’s where Nicki was when she stalled. A rushed, fumbled hill start. The oncoming lorry perfectly compressing her little car before it ever got to the scrapyard. She was still in the driver’s seat.

And it’s a long road. I don’t think anyone uses it just to pick up fish and chips or pop down to the bookies. Maybe you’re driving to Scotland for a holiday. Or you’re a long-distance lorry driver who’s been behind the wheel all day. So drivers get tired, and that’s when accidents happen. Lots of them. It’s definitely not the kind of road that a couple of kids should be riding along on bikes, yet that’s what we did, one hot August afternoon in the school holidays. Richmond to Barnard Castle, some 30 miles or so. Why we thought this’d be a good idea I really can’t remember. Dominic Cummings had yet to put Barnard Castle on the map and we certainly didn’t need to test our eyesight. I can’t even remember what we planned to do once we got there; if anything. I don’t think that was the point.

I’m pretty sure that it was 1976, the year of THE heatwave because it was scorching; I would’ve been twelve at the time. Like all school summer holidays, we spent every day possible down by the river unless there was a day when we couldn’t avoid being dragged off by a parent to do something, like go to an agricultural show or visit obscure relatives to whom we couldn’t quite work out how we were related. We spent our days jumping off the waterfalls, dive-bombing each other, and generally fooling around in the numbing water then lying in the sun, drying off and trying to get warm again; this sequence was repeated throughout the day until we all reluctantly trudged home for tea. They were fun, carefree days. We didn’t think about the hidden rocks lurking at the bottom of the waterfalls that could’ve smashed our skulls like conkers, nor about the strong currents, challenging even to the habituated salmon straining to reach their spawning grounds every autumn. Sun damage was an alien concept and, if asked, we’d have said that sun lotion must be a nickname for the ice-cold orange Sunkist we bought with our pocket money from the kiosk nearby.

That summer, a sheep had fallen into the river upstream and its bloated, putrefying corpse had lodged in a pool at the foot of the waterfalls like an over-sized fizzing bath bomb. We’d hovered around the dead sheep like a swarm of wingless bluebottles, transfixed and revolted in equal measure. Some of the boys prodded the sheep with sticks, but mostly we just held our noses and stared, before retreating to the weir where we couldn’t see it anymore. Someone had brought a battery-operated radio, probably an end-of-term present, and as we laid on the rocks, our skinny bodies lined-up like chipolatas under a grill, we listened to ABBA and The Stylistics. It might’ve been to escape the stench emanating from the sheep which, despite the static air, crept stealthily across the rocks like an assassin before invading our unsuspecting nostrils, no matter how far away from it we moved; or maybe the sun just got unbearably hot but, more likely, after three or four weeks of swim, sun, repeat, even we found ourselves feeling a bit bored; I can’t say now. Just that we decided to leave and go on a bike ride.

I wasn’t even a proficient cyclist. I’d only just mastered the basics during a week’s stay with my cousins earlier that summer. I was still at the wobbly stage, where I hardly dared take my hands off the handlebars; looking over my shoulder was impossible without veering off in the direction that I was looking, and my hand signals were a jerky, fleeting gesture, more akin to a Nazi salute than anything that could inform other road users of my intentions. My bike had definitely seen better days; the seat was loose and nipped my thighs every time I went over a bump leaving angry red blemishes that made me look as if I’d been attacked by a giant mosquito. I think the pump was missing and my tyre pressures would’ve been no competition for the record high-level of inflation that prevailed at the time, something else of which I was oblivious. And to wear a helmet was unheard of; hell, they wouldn’t even start wearing them in the Tour de France for another 29 years.

But we didn’t think about how dangerous the road was, in the same way that we didn’t think about the rocks, the current, or sun damage to our skin. We just wrung out our costumes, rolled up our towels, and then we rode off. Not fearless or brave. Just unaware.