Day 2 Friday August 20th.
I usually start the day with a cuppa before leaving the house but the milk’s off this morning (yuk) so it’s a dry start today, I set off a little early for the 20 min drive up the M1 to Barnsley so I can have a few coffee?s in the drivers canteen at the Yard before we start. Im soon joined by Paul & then John and were ready to roll just after 8am. John elects me to go 1st this morning; I reckon he is afraid the gremlins will still be there for him so wants to watch for a while. We head straight for the M1 south to get to Rotherham for more test area practice and I pick up from where I left off yesterday. I drive for about 1 ½ hours without incident really, just taking things easy and fine tuning the driving.
Then we do the change over and John cautiously takes the wheel. It soon becomes apparent that the Gremlins in the gearbox have disappeared for John today and his confidence grows accordingly, he gives a much improved drive and by about 10.45am were pulling up outside the café for a welcome full English and coffee.
Fully satiated with Englands finest we head back to the wagon and John jumps in the hot seat to whisk us back to Barnsley for the eagerly anticipated reverse. The weather by this point is lousy, the rain looks like its here for the rest of the day but we need to get some practice at the reverse because if we dont we will both be worrying about it all weekend. The yard is fairly well stocked with trailers and tractor units it being Friday afternoon, so much so that Paul decides its not worth moving any of them so we can set the reverse maneuvering area up in the usual place which has marks for the cones and a straight kerbline that acts as the line marker on the Right hand side of the yard.
Paul uses a length of hose laid across the yard to replicate this but its not straight and the only spare room we can use as a bay is way over the other side of the yard, these are not ideal condition but it’s the best were going to get today so we plod on.
Paul gets in and shows us how its done, it looks fairly straight forward so Im eager to have a go myself. OK so it’s not so easy, its impossible!! I can get the first bit ok where we get nicely round the first cone, line up to take her across the yard, then my head go’s blank!! Utterly & completely blank I mean, I don’t know which way to turn the wheel at all & whichever way I do turn it the trailer just gets more and more out of position.
We were having 2 Go’s each in turn and John seemed to be picking it up a little, he almost got it in the bay once!!. The rain was getting heavier, we were getting wetter and neither of us were getting close to cracking the reversing. It was soon time to pack in for the day and I left the yard feeling disappointed with myself and fearful that this was a nut that I possibly might not be able to crack. It was a feeling that stayed with me pretty much all weekend and I worried nearly constantly the whole of Saturday and Sunday about not being able to get my head round it. My wife says I was constantly steering in my sleep and waking her up . 