The not so "smart" road to nowhere

There are some experiences in life that we either wish we hadn't had or, if we haven't had them yet, we don't want them to occur. Unfortunately, last weekend I found myself living one such experience, and whilst it turned out alright in the end, it is not something I would wish to repeat.

I've held a full driving licence since the age of 19, although it was several years later that I purchased my first car. Money was tight in those days, especially during my student years, but living in a city such as Manchester, where public transport was plentiful and relatively cheap, there was no need for me to get behind the wheel.

Since acquiring my first vehicle, a Mark III Ford Escort estate, purchased second-hand from the company I worked for at the time, I’ve enjoyed many years of pleasant, enjoyable, and relatively stress-free motoring. One of my worst fears behind the wheel, apart from the obvious one of being involved in an accident, has been that of breaking down somewhere at the side of the road. Being stranded somewhere, miles from anywhere during a long road trip, with an incapacitated vehicle, and unable to continue and complete my journey. Even worse would be for the car to suffer a fault whilst travelling in fast moving traffic, along a motorway, or other dual carriageway road.

I wouldn't say I'm a motoring geek, but I do check my oil and coolant levels from time to time and the same applies to my tyre pressures. These checks are particularly important prior to setting off on a long journey. Well, I was on a short car ride on Sunday, when the worst happened, and my vehicle developed a fault whilst I was driving along the motorway. Before going into detail, I'd like to set the scene, and explain what I've been doing I'm where I was travelling home from, so please bear with, as they say.

Early on Sunday morning, young Matthew and I had driven over to Chiddingstone Causeway, in order to grab a breakfast at the village hall. We left Mrs PBT's behind, tucked up in bed, as she is definitely not a morning person these days, and wouldn’t have thanked us, if we’d woken her up. We arrived at the hall shortly before 9am, where there was already quite a number of eager diners sat down inside.  We had to wait about 30 minutes for our breakfast to be served, but it was worth the wait, with several rashers of properly matured bacon, a farmhouse sausage, fried egg, toast, and tin tomatoes.

A small number of volunteers do the cooking for these breakfasts, which take place once a fortnight. All profits generated go towards the village hall fund, so with me working in Chiddingstone Causeway, it's nice to put a little something back into the local community. With breakfast done and dusted what should we do afterwards? There was very little that needed doing outside, as the with the growing season coming to an end, the garden is now more or less taking care of itself. Besides with rain forecast there would be no need to water anything either. This is where the kernel of an idea took shape in my mind, and because it involved a visit to a different branch of the hardware chain store that Matthew works at, he jumped at the idea.

My plan was to take a drive over to the mid Surrey town of Dorking, take a look around the town, and visit the local branch of Robert Dyas, before heading home. Prior to parking up in the town though, I told Matthew we would drive the short distance along the A24 towards the foot of Box Hill, park up at the Mercure Hotel at Burford Bridge, in the shadow of the well-known local landmark. We would then walk the short distance to the point where the North Downs Way descends from the summit of Box Hill and crosses the busy A24.

I wanted to take a look at the famous Stepping Stones which is where the NDW crosses a shallow stream by means of a series of flat and strategically placed stepping stones. I had missed this small, but significant stretch of the trail, when I walked from Betchworth station to the halt at Boxhill & Westhumble. That particular hike took place on New Year's Eve 2021, and it was whilst descending from the summit of Boxhill that I took a wrong turn. I only realised my error when I was about a third of the way down, but as the going under foot was very slippery, due to the long-wet grass, I decided to keep going and eventually reached the bottom, where the footpath brought me out from just behind the Burford Bridge Hotel.

Annoyed at having missed the famous stepping stones, I promised myself, for the sake of completeness, to return one day and see then for myself. Last Sunday seemed as good a day as any, and it wasn't that far to walk from the car park either. Matthew still managed to complain, moaning that I was leading him on a wild goose chase, even though it didn't take us long to find the famous stones, the clue being a small National Trust car park. We walked down to the stream and had a look at the crossing.

The setting was quite picturesque, although the stream didn't seem as wide as some of the photos I’d seen. This may have been due to the lack of rain in recent months. I took a few photos before walking back to the car, past the famous Rykas Café, and the hordes of bikers it attracts. 

We then headed into Dorking, for my first visit in many years. We had a stroll around this attractive town, which allowed Matthew time to call in at the local branch of his store, whilst I grabbed a flat white, from a local independent coffee shop opposite. By the time I’d received my coffee to go, and met back up with Matthew, it had started raining, so we hurried back to the car feeling a bit foolish for having left our coats on the back seat.

It was time to head back to Tonbridge, and although we had made our way cross country from Chiddingstone, on the homeward trip I decided we would take the motorway. After entering Reigate, we drove up the steep Reigate Hill torch towards Junction 8 of the M25 and joined the motorway. We were motoring along fine, until we reached the stretch between the Godstone turning and Clackets Lane services. As we were driving along, I was explaining to Matthew what “smart motorways” are, and how in my book, the powers that be had rather foolishly removed the “hard shoulder” in order to provide an extra traffic lane.

This was all well and good, I said, until something goes wrong - not for one moment thinking something would go wrong, but unfortunately it did!  We were travelling around 60-65 mph in lane 2, when the car started juddering and I experienced a loss of power. it wasn't a complete loss, but what on earth was going on? My vehicle is powered by diesel, and a warning light had been flashing on the dashboard, indicating a fault with the glow plugs, so this was an obvious clue to the cause of the problem. We’d already passed the A22 turn off, and the next junction was the turn off for the A21. It's quite a complicated junction and was some miles away, so what to do next?

Being in a vehicle, whose engine was malfunctioning, was not a position I wanted to be in, but equally there was nowhere safe to pull over, and stop. Fortunately, Clacket Lane services were not too far away, so I decided we would leave the motorway there, providing the car kept going, and call for assistance from there. On the way, we noticed one of the yellow-painted, so-called “refuge spaces” designed as somewhere cars in difficulties can pull over and stop. Matthew was surprised when we didn’t make use of this area, so I told him that it was far too dangerous a place to stop. We limped on until we reached the service station, parked the car, and phoned Britannia Rescue.

Despite the promise of a tow truck within about 20 minutes, we ended up waiting a couple of hours for one to arrive. This wasn’t a problem, but it was rather annoying. The main thing was we were both safe, and the car was physically undamaged. It was an obvious fault – according to Google, and with the recovery vehicle on its way, the car plus Matthew and I would be driven to a garage of our choice, where we could leave the vehicle for the fault to be investigated and repaired.

It didn’t quite work out like that. Sure, we parked the car outside the local Skoda main dealership, deposited the key in the external safe, and caught a train back to Tonbridge. The following morning, Matthew drove me over to the dealership, and I formally booked my vehicle in. I sat there and listened to the sob story from the girl on the counter, about how busy they were, and how they couldn’t possibly work on the car for two or even three weeks.

I explained that I required the vehicle back, in a drivable condition, by the end of the month, as we needed to drive down to Southampton to embark on a lengthy cruise. That had virtually zero effect on the stony-faced receptionist, so I told her if they were unable to repair the vehicle before the allotted time, I would have to leave it with them, as me being out of the country did make collecting it, just that little bit awkward!

The car is still at the dealership, and Mrs PBT’s has booked a taxi to drive us to the cruise terminal and back. Not quite what we wanted, but as I was able to cancel, and claim a refund on the overnight hotel stay, and 20 days parking, that goes some way to offset the cost of the taxi. Looking on the bright side, breaking down where we did was far more preferable than the vehicle malfunctioning on the drive down to Southampton. That’s before even recount the number of cases my good lady wife is planning on taking.

As far as “smart motorways” are concerned, whatever government numpty, or treasury official came up with that crazy idea? According to campaigners, there have been at least 79 deaths linked to smart motorways, and in January 2022, the rollout of new stretches of “all-lane running” (the type we were on), was paused for five years, in order to collect more information and make existing schemes safer. Ministers have now gone further and cancelled the building of new smart motorways.