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At the foot of the first ridge of the Appalachians is the improbably named village of Vesuvius. It's not use telling Americans that Vesuvius ought to be the top of the mountain and that the mountain ought to be a volcano because, frankly, they wouldn't listen. So we'll have to accept simply that it's called Vesuvius, otherwise I shall never get on with the story.

Across the top of the Appalachians is the Blue Ridge Parkway, the old Indian road that Laurel and Hardy were singing about when they were on the trail of the lonesome pine. Vesuvius is at the bottom of the fast, snaking drop that we took to get down to a sensible height.

At the foot of the drop is a level crossing and on the level crossing was a freight train. Beyond that train, but not overlapping the road, was a second train. And neither showed any sign of moving. We discussed it, a little group of Hell's Angels and I, then other people joined in and we were quite a little happy if puzzled band which only eventually decided to send someone down the tracks to see what had happened. And the news the messenger brought back was that the train had a saloon car pinned to its buffers.

This was going to be not only a gruesome wait but a lengthy one and I turned back up the village and waited on the grass outside a church until the others arrived. And since it was sunny, I lay first on my back and then, because otherwise it is hard for cyclists to get the backs of their legs brown, on my stomach.

Clearly it is not every day that religious leaders look out of their windows to see a brightly coloured, Lycra-clad cyclist spreadeagled on the lawn and so out came a fresh-faced man in glasses to see if I was still alive.

I assured him I was, apologised for making an exhibition of myself in his garden, and explained that I was awaiting the outcome of a train crash.

"A train crash?" he said with almost indecent enthusiasm. "You kidding?"

I said I wasn't, that the train had hit a car rather than another train, but that it had been a train and it had been in a crash and so "train crash" didn't seem to be stretching terms too much.

"Well, darn it!" he said, almost resentfully. "Twenny-seven years ah lived here an' I ain't never seen a train crash. Gotta go an' see that." And he got in his bright red car and drove down to add to the confusion at the level crossing.

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When I rode down there myself, it was in time to meet a rural traffic cop sent to see what help he could give the local sheriff. The help didn't amount to an awful lot and so he and I spent most of the next hour just chatting, outside an abandoned store with faded advertisements for Coca-Cola still on its woodwork. Together we marvelled as the car was towed back up the road in front of us, barely damaged.

"Well, shoot!" the policeman said as his head turned to inspect just how little damage a car can sustain when pushed 500 metres down a railway line. "That's what I gonna ask for for my next patrol car, a good German car, a BMDubya. Iddy-biddy American car'd have fallen to bits, Ah reckon. Well, shoot!"

He told me the train driver had seen the car driver and his wife approach the crossing, that the car driver had looked to the right and seen a stationary train and seen no reason to stop for it. What he hadn't seen, as he zig-zagged through the half-barriers, was the second train coming from the left. It hit him at 15mph and the enormous load of iron rods that it carried had taken 500 metres to bring to a halt.

"Seems there's a reggalation says trains have to slow down to 15mph when they cross," the policeman said. "Otherwise he'd have bin goin' at 45 mahles an hour. That's what saved the driver, I reckon. Bet he's not gonna do that again." And then, as an afterthought: "Bet he ain't heard the last from his wife, either."

I never did get my policeman's name. He said he used to work on the drugs squad in Richmond, the nearest big town. "Far too hectic," he said.

He then applied to be a traffic cop in the quietest rural sector he knew of. "Perfect day for me, suh, thass a day when I don't do nuttin' at all."

At which, as if by deliberate irony, he got a call to drive out to the Interstate to attend a mobile home that had caught fire. I felt sorry for him. Another perfect day ruined.