Glad to be alive!

Well what a day! Our whole holiday has been based around us heading to Bristol for the Bristol balloon fiesta. Of course in typical English fashion after months of dry heat we had rain last night and this morning and wind so the fiesta was a bit of a washout. Not totally but certainly not as spectacular as we were expecting (sis did get to see the Minion balloon so was happy).
Because of the lack of balloons we entertained ourselves with a wander around the motor home exhibition and then walked down to Ashton Court (the house linked to the grounds of the fiesta). This shot is M and sis with Gromit (a local resident).

The balloons were supposed to be all ‘going up’ at 6.30pm but due to wind that seemed unlikely so we decided to get out of the venue before everyone else, which we did and landed back on the M32 and then M4 with ease. Fate however decided we were not to arrive home early although it did spare our lives and the lives of others!

I was driving along the M4 keeping a close eye on a motorbike in front of us and in front of him a car towing a caravan pulled out into the middle lane. As it did so it started ‘wobbling’ which I noticed and so slowed down slightly. The wobble got more and more pronounced until the car lost control, the car an spread across 3 lanes of the motorway! The car smacked into the crash barrier, spun round and smashed into the caravan it was towing, leaving the car stationary in the left lane and the caravan across the other two lanes! Thank the Lord (and I really do mean that quite genuinely) both myself and the biker had slowed down enough that we could slam our brakes on and not hit each other or the car/caravan and instead pulled on to the hard shoulder. A VERY narrow escape - this all happened at somewhere in the region of 70mph!!!!

Sis rang the emergency services, and after a deep breath I got out expecting carnage as the front of car had hit caravan. Instead the driver got out, got his young son out and the dog and not a scratch on any of them.