Chumbley Warner Corner

For many a year I've travelled pretty much the same route to work. There's other, longer, straighter, safer routes. With more traffic on them. Lorries. School buses, tractors. Long queues all moving at the speed of the slowest driver.

So I cut across country. Through a couple of villages before swerving out through the woods. Apart from the occasional deer, it's a pretty safe journey except in the snow, ice, fog, mud & rain. Then it's real fun! Not too many other road users. Except at one junction. The Harling Fiveway crossing.
Two long straight downhill sections meet at a sweeping bend. Over the years I've lived all round this area, working at various places. Always enjoyed that sweeping bend - testing the limit on motorcycles, scooters, three wheelers, even with a trailer full of scrap. Some mornings there's evidence of those that haven't been as lucky. Fresh furrows ploughed in fields, tyres rolled off rims.
And at it's apex, three roads meet.
Hang on. Bit like this;

Most mornings? Draw up. Look left. Look right. And over into the woods. Used to share a lift and each took a side, looking over the hedges to the right, round the copse to the left, quick shout of "CLEAR!" and straight on, never slowing.

But some mornings, everyone arrives at this corner together. Stalemate. False starts, stalling, almost making eye contact until the bravest moves first.

Funny. So funny. Someone else thought so a while ago and pinned a sign to the huge oak tree facing me each morning.

Chumbley Warner Corner.

Made me laugh each morning, for the months it hung there. Pity it's been taken down now. I'd like to say "hey" to whoever put it there. And tell them it was me who put the bricks under a wheel-less shopping trolley in that layby in Wortham...