divine intervention

I like driving.  And I love driving fast. Not quite flat out on public roads but when conditions and road quietness allow then pushing my car to its limits makes me feel alive somehow.  Like I’m right on the edge.

Tonight, I went for a dark drive over the Brecon Beacons.  The roads were beautiful: banked by ploughed snow and bone dry.  I’ve driven or cycled these roads over a hundred times.  I know every bend, raise and dip in the road and every camber in the light or dark; and cover them at great speed.

Tonight, feeling sick and tired of being ill and noticing my increasing stress and anxiety I felt the need to drive over that road.

Anyway, blasting over the bit from Penderyn to Storey Arms (just above Brecon), thanking the snow plough and gritter drivers for doing their job I was, as usual, making good progress.  And then I got to one of my favourite, blind bends.  One I know can be taken flat out, especially if you’d like a bit of an adrenalin rush.  But I suddenly slowed right down.  I don’t know why.  I mean the road was completely empty and I chastised myself for scrubbing away some of my speed.

And then, turning the corner, there in the middle of the pitch black road, illuminated only be my headlights were three huge mountain ponies spread across the carriageway.

Had I taken the bend at my normal speed, there’d have been no way I’d have been able to stop or avoid them such was the suddenness of their appearance and I’d have hit them at 60mph or so in a soft top Mazda and met my death, probably instantly.  I managed to manoeuvre through this equine chicane unharmed and with my car very much intact.

I counted my blessings and carried on; flashing my lights to warn oncoming motorists hoping that none of them had to encounter the same problem I did.

So, have I got a guardian angel? 

hope so...