Scrapyard, Aberaeron, August 1992

[mercrocker]

If I could  recreate any aspect of the past  (lottery win required) it would be a scrapyard like this.   I spent Saturday afternoons as a schoolkid down our local one, sometimes the bloke would let you in sometimes he would tell you to forkoff or let one of his scaffold-pole wielders lob a shocker at  you.   On a good day you could sit in a mouldering Mk IX Jag (I used to take sandwiches!) and pry old badges  off all the chod.  I soon learned what shit-metal meant, how peeling chrome  can open a blood vessel,  how rotten five  year old British cars could be and how stripping a Herald rear end could nearly take your face off....I can still guess almost any British market vehicle  of the 50s/60s from a picture of the driving position.   I only wish I could have afforded camera film  back then.   People who do not understand any of this have  no place in my bubble.....

[anonymous user]

I can remember a yard up on a hillside overlooking the A40 at Symonds yat, I think that got cleared in the mid '90s, the 80 year old owner couldn't afford to bring it up to standard for the new EU regs. I went there a couple of times and he had stuff going back to the '50s, much of it coated in moss where it had been there for decades. I was running a 107e ford prefect at the time and he had plenty of bits for it. I seem to to remember he had buried treasure like an Austin Metropolitan and a mega early production 1948 morris minor with the bumper spacers.

The council went in and fragged the lot. Bastards.

Not sure about the rest, but, the Minor at least did get rescued and was sold at auction for a stupidly large amount considering it was by then a pile of scrap.

 

Around that time this was resting at the services the other side of the road in amongst the old fairground equipment.