More from the M5

Monday afternoon I took a small number of guests up to Frankley services on the M5. There I was met by a couple of our luxury minibuses ready and waiting to take my passengers on to their various destinations. It was a bit of a hard trip due to the strong cross wind. Driving across the Somerset Levels was the worst but the wind continued to be strong and blustery. As I was heading north, just before junction 11A when I was going past a group of HGVs I noticed a few brake lights come on, then smoke drifting across the carriageway.

A quick glance to the right and I could see where the smoke was coming from. Right underneath a bridge was a burning car. The whole of the front end was engulfed in flames. The traffic heading south was moving out into the 3rd lane to get as far away from it as possible. I was past it and a long way away before a thought occurred to me, 'What would happen if the petrol tank exploded?"

An hour later I was passing the spot on my way home and the bridge was still standing though the car had gone leaving a big black mark on the hard shoulder. Highway maintenance men were there clearing away any debris.

A bit later I stopped at Taunton Dean Services for a rest and took the photo of the steam engine that was parked there on a low loader. I wonder why it didn't make it own way to it's destination, under it's own steam as it were.

Pylons are us

Driving up and down the M5 can, eventually, get quite boring. Gradually one begins to notice little things that are adjacent to the road. Some big things as well. Last week I began to notice that in some places there were a lot of pylons. The kind that carry our electricity round the country. (I did say it was quite boring) I began to wonder if there were people who went round taking photos of them, were there different kinds of pylons, was there a pylon that had been designed by a noted pylon builder that every pylon enthusiast had to see before they died. I mean people take photos of steam trains and even buses. Why not pylons?

That was Friday. Saturday evening I was watching the BBC news quiz program "Have I Got News For You". The last round in this quiz program asks the teams to fill in missing words from the week's headlines. Some of these headlines come from your average newspaper but some are from a guest publication such as, "Well Diggers are Welcome" and “ The Coffin Makers Gazette.”
This week’s guest publication was, as you have probably guessed, “The Pylon Appreciation Society” Click here for a link to their web page.

And here is a photo I took earlier.