Remember meeting AWY at Salzburg one saturday when running with Dave ■■? from Cornwall and we only had a few hours to get across Austria to Spielfeld so Andrew asked which way we were going so to beat the driving ban we said we were going over the Loibel Pass which we could reach in 3 hours to which Andrew replied ‘‘my god man where’s that’’. We got there in time but as I used to transit Yugo to Gevgelia on T forms I had to get an agent to do the customs forms, unfortunately he had gone home so I had to wait till the sunday morning and Dave and Andrew carried on to Ljubijana which was the last time I ever saw Andrew.
Hello Charlie, are you thinking of Dave Clarke who had blond hair from Cornwall and he used to have a Fiat in the early eighties. I remember that he had a Cornish flag on the back of his cab and might of had it painted on the air deflector later on.
Regards Steve.
looks like johnny alan {RIP} sitting down on the left 
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mushroomman:
bullitt:
sinbin31:
Hi GavinJ Y P and another driver cant rember his name maybe u will know.
rgds Roger
That chap sitting on the left in the black shorts…is / was his name Ben?
Was he slightly deaf in one ear??
A shortish bloke but a real jack the lad comedian type, from london way??
As Roger hasn’t posted on here for some time now I hope he won’t mind me reposting this photo of his that he put on the Kenworth thread along time ago.
A lot of the lads will remember John Yorkstone Paxton from Scotland but as Bullitt asked who was the other guy with the
black hair.
I remember seeing him on a number of occasions and I am sure that he was from the London area, was he a Pan Express driver or a Grangewood driver, maybe Fred remembers him.Regards Steve.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------frreshir (Fred) wrote - I don’t recognise any of the two lads Steve, at first I thought the lad on the right looking at the picture was Johnny Holland but that is a wild guess, also isn’t that trailer in Astrans livery ■■ regards Fred
Hello Fred, as that picture belongs to Roger (I have lifted it off the Kenworth thread) that might even be Rogers tilt as I can only remember John Paxton pulling a fridge. When Roger gets back from his holidays he might remember the other guys name .
I hope you are well Fred.
Regards Steve.
mushroomman:
Hello Fred, as that picture belongs to Roger (I have lifted it off the Kenworth thread) that might even be Rogers tilt as I can only remember John Paxton pulling a fridge. When Roger gets back from his holidays he might remember the other guys name
I hope you are well Fred.Regards Steve.
Or maybe loose wire will know who it is 
The lad on the stool, with J.Y.P. looks like a young Ritchie Thorne from the Forrest of Dean.
Regards Jamie.
no not richi definitely johnny allan 
M&C Jamie:
The lad on the stool, with J.Y.P. looks like a young Ritchie Thorne from the Forrest of Dean.Regards Jamie.
Hi Jamie…I had also thought a young Ritchie Thorne…But held back with my comment
Thanks Steve it was definitely Dave Clarke with a yellow Fiat, nice bloke, I guess he’s probably retired by now, maybe someone could get him on here, he must have plenty of tales to tell…
Charlie
Well done Jamie and R.D.F. I think that you could be right that it is Richie in the photo . I do remember that he did have an American motor at one time although I thought it was a blue colour for some reason so that might be his motor behind him.
I got up for a pee in the middle of the night (like you do) and it suddenly came to me who I thought it was. I was thinking of a Tanker Bill driver called ■■■■ but I only remember Bill having red Scanias.
As regards Sinbin being disguised as Loose Cannon 
, no I can’t see that myself. If he is then I will be more Gobsmacked then when I realised that the bad rooster was actually Wallace and Gromitts lodger the penguin 
.
Don’t know who the chap with John Paxton is but it’s not Richie Thorne.
geoffthecrowtaylor,
Bloody hell Geoff there’s nowt wrong with your memory its 35 years ago that I was using Honey Monster as a handle and I’d long forgotten about it. I’ve enjoyed reading your posts and you pictures. With all your experience of many years running abroad and the stories that you could tell about those years have you ever thought of writing a book im sure it would make good reading. I lived near to Tony Traynor an his wife Dee
but have’nt seen them for many years have you any idea what Tony’s doing these days.
In one of your posts I think you mentioned that Dave Mason had passed away is that correct ?. I remember being in Dover with Dave over a weekend i was tipping at L.I.F.T on the Monday morning and Dave was going back out after switching trailers with your Tony, Dave wanted to do some washing as he had no more clean gear left so off we go into Dover to find a launderette where Dave chucked all his gear plus stripping down to his underwear into one washer much to the amusement of everyone in there.
After when his clothes were washed and dried he got dressed as they came straight out of the dryer chucked the rest into a bin bag then it was off to meet Tony to change trailers. We had plenty of laughs that morning, fond memories.
Keep the stories coming,
Regards,
Dave
chazzer:
Thanks Steve it was definitely Dave Clarke with a yellow Fiat, nice bloke, I guess he’s probably retired by now, maybe someone could get him on here, he must have plenty of tales to tell…
Charlie
I think He’s still on for Mesguen or whatever theyre called that Brittany fridge firm I have seen Him a few times on The M6, nice bloke Dave I used to natter with Him in Marocco when He was pulling for DTS…
graham ball:
looks like johnny alan {RIP} sitting down on the leftI thought it looked like John too the hairs his for sure & that Kenworth of JP’s was doing Greece same time as John was in His 142…
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You know Chazzer, that’s one of the things that I love about this website, somebody mentions something or a place that I haven’t heard of for over thirty years and then I end up spending two or three days looking at Google maps and then doing loads of research to back up something that somebody told me years ago.
Your mention of The Loibl Pass had me going through my old passports knowing that there might have been a stamp in one of them somewhere. Well I eventually found one and then the memories started coming back about the time that I used this border crossing from Yugoslavia into Austria.
I had been told to reload furniture from a little village north of a place called Kranj which is in Slovenia. When I arrived there early in the morning I was pleasantly surprised to find that another of our drivers called Nobby Clark had arrived the night before and he was also waiting to load. At about 7 a.m. a little Yugo car arrived with the clearing agent from InterEuropa and took our carnets off us. Shortly afterwards a Yugoslav customs man arrived on a pushbike and after a bit of a pow wow they told us to park along side a loading bay and to strip out the side of the tilt.
Nobby or Brian which was his real name, got into my cab and no doubt I put the kettle on and I probably started to make us some breakfast.
He asked me which way I was going back home and as I didn’t really know the area too well I presumed that we would have to make our way back to Spielafeld and depending on the queue at the border that we should be able to get to at least Mama’s for the night. If we get away from here before lunchtime it would be worth pushing on through Graz before the 9 p.m. driving ban kicks into place and if all goes well we can try and get to Pauline’s at Golling I told him.
There is another way said Nobby which might save us having to go back to Celje and I am sure that there won’t be a long queue at the border. With me being more than twenty five years younger than Nobby at the time and knowing that he had been doing continental and middle east work for quite some years I decided to go along with him.
I looked at my Phillips Atlas of Europe and my Michelin map and I asked him what was the name of this border crossing, The Loibl Pass he said but I don’t think that you will find it on there and he was right, it certainly wasn’t on my maps.
I asked him how he knew about this border which I had never heard of before and he went on to tell me something interesting although now I wish that I would of paid a lot more attention to what he was telling me at the time.
Nobby told me that during the war he was in The Sherwood Foresters Regiment, I knew that he was from the Mansfield area as he had at one time told me that he lived near the Walkers of Tuxford depot. He went on to tell me that he had landed on the beach near Salerno in Italy and that they had fought their way up through to Rome. As the war came to an end The Sherwood Foresters were sent into Austria and Nobby ended up near the Yugoslav / Austrian border.
I remember him telling me that prisoners from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria had built a tunnel through one of the mountains during the war. I had heard of the name Mauthausen before but I thought that it was miles away as we used to park up at a hotel between Salzburg and Vienna called Saint Valentine. I had heard a couple of drivers saying that the next time they were week ending at Saint Valentine then they would go to have a look where the concentration camp used to be but I don’t know if anybody ever did.
I can’t remember if Nobby told me that the war had just ended or if it was the last few days before it ended but he did go on to tell me that that one day four men walked out of the forest with their hands up in the air and said that they wanted to surrender to the British. This to Nobby sounded strange because all they had to do was walk down the valley and across the fields further into Yugoslavia and they could all go back to their homes. Apparently they were Yugoslavs who had been working on the tunnel for the Germans and offered to show the allies where the tunnel was.
As it was late in the evening Nobby and his mates were told to set up camp for the night when a group of Yugoslav Partisans appeared and persuaded the British that as they were still in Yugoslavia that the Partisans should take responsibility for the Yugoslav prisoners. The prisoners didn’t want to go with them and pleaded with the British to take them along with them but in the end they were dragged off with the Partisans. A couple of hours later a volley of shots was heard further down the valley from the direction that the Partisans had departed. Nobby and his mates were sure that those four blokes had been executed and felt remorse that they had handed them over.
After we were loaded we did travel over the Loibl Pass but I can’t remember travelling through any tunnels until we were further into Austria.
I wonder if The Sherwood Foresters had a daily war diary for this area and if there is anything in it regarding this incident.
These are a couple of the links that I came across yesterday which I thought were quite interesting.
unprofessionaltranslation.blogsp … chive.html
ljubljana-life.com/news/news … g_WW2_Past
Regards Steve.
Your stamp definitely states Lobitunnel so presumably the tunnel was on the border?
Steve youre correct that is not only the Loibl pass but also loibl tunnel. I ve done em both .They are reached from the Klagenfurt area of Ausria. First time I wnt was with a split load of satellite dishes for good old R J ,half for Klagenfurt the rest for Ljubjlana,light load over the pass. Second time deicing chemicals for the UN aircraft at Zagreb again R J .I was running with Rogers ex partners Carl Burgesses men Co. called JSM from stoke they were going to Split all with UN . gear there was alot of that sort of traffic in the early 90s.Second run was thru the tunnel.Have a nise day Geoff.
I went over the Loibl pass a couple of times in the ‘70’s.I just liked looking for alternative border crossings I suppose.
I had gone through the middle of Austria,down to Villach then along to Klagenfurt,then dead south from there.
If you go onto Google earth,the area is at grid location:
46 degrees 26’ 14.9" N
14 degrees 15’ 16" E
Steve, I only went over the Loibl Pass a few times prefering to use the Lavemunde/Dravograd crossing further on between Loible and Maribor where if there were 2 trucks in front it was rush hour, normally you were through in half an hour and on to a freshly tarmaced road straight through to Maribor past a picturesque lake on the right. Spielfeld as you know could be such a long drawn out affair that I wondered why so many uk drivers used it unless they wanted to cancel at Mamas or perhaps they did’nt like venturing off the beaten track.
Charlie.