Faith in humanity restored

On Saturday 17 March at approximately 8:00pm I was riding my white CBF125 from Chelmsford to Bury St Edmunds.

It was a horrible night for biking – wet, windy and therefore cold but I was doing a training course in Chelmsford and the bike was the only transport to get there.

I came up to a roundabout possibly heading onto the A131 but I was taking the 3rd exit which meant going right on the roundabout, so I take the normal course following the inside of the roundabout and just as I pass the 2nd exit on my left, the bike is still pretty much at full tilt, I feel the back wheel spin out from under me and next thing I know I’m sliding along the road next to the roundabout.

There were 3 vehicles directly behind me and all stopped – two young people in a car, a middle aged man in a Transit and an older man in a car.

All came to see me and help me get the bike off the road before checking the damage – which was pretty severe – bent handlebars, brake leaver twisted and pushed up about 2 inches along with some serious scratches on the exhaust heat shield.

I was fine save for some major bruising where my elbow hit the road, my jacket took the impact and slid along the road but thankfully still remained intact.

Having looked at the bike and tried it out I was not keen to ride back to Bury given I still had bout 35 miles to go on twisty country roads, not all of which were well lit and also considering it was a journey I had only done once before in the dark.

The guy in the Transit (unfortunately I’ve forgotten his name) tells me he’s going to Sudbury but doesn’t mind taking me back to Bury with the bike. So we load up the bike in the back of the van and he drives me all the way back to Bury.

It turns out he’s a biker too, generally riding a Yamaha 750 so we had a good old chat on the way back but I want to emphasise that he went a good 20 miles out of his way to take me back home for no real reason other than he didn’t want me riding back unless I was 100% sure about doing it!

It really made a difference to how that night went having such a genuine, friendly guy stop and help in such a practical way – it was great that so many people stopped but to help practically too was fantastic.

I still don’t really know what happened – it may have been wet diesel but all I know is one minute I was fine next minute im sliding along the road!

This demonstrates that there are still decent people out there and some are even willing to put themselves out to help others. I hope he gets this as I am really grateful for his help on that night.

The bike was off the road for just over a week and thankfully I have managed to stay upright since!