In message <
[email protected]>
Ian Rawlings <
[email protected]> wrote:
> On 2006-08-19, Dave R <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Right, your turn, bonus points for photographic evidence.............
>
> I've been lucky and have managed to avoid any daft cock-ups off-road,
> the closest I've come is on my very first ever off-road trip, a week
> after buying the truck, trying a lane on my own and rather nervous.
> I'd stopped on the lane (just wide enough for the truck with trees
> either side) in some fog to light a ciggy. I hear a shrieking sound
> and look up to see a massive horse and tiny teenage rider galloping
> out of the fog, the girl being just a passenger now with the horse
> having decided to take over. It crammed itself down the side of the
> truck, wedged between the truck and a tree, and thrashed around for a
> bit with more screaming from the girl. Eventually it reversed out and
> stood there looking a bit sheepish while the thankfully unharmed girl
> calmed down.
>
> It was a daft lane to ride a barely-controllable horse down, it's on
> the outskirts of Reading beside the Swallowfield bypass, a busy road
> hidden from the lane, so it can be nice and peaceful then suddenly a
> motorbike will scream down the bypass. I've seen a fair few horses
> spooked around that area.
>
Here's the unedited text from our club mag article I did. It still
gets menitioned every time we get together.......
article about mow cop weekend - you might want to load this into
an editor to read, the formatting is strictky non-Netiquette!
So this was to be the big one - the whole of the Mow Cop site to play with. I took the Friday off, thinking that it would be a good idea to get there nice and early to grab a good spot to pitch my little tent on.
On arriving at about 3 o'clock, I found no one there, so I spent the next three and a half hours sitting in the glorious sunshine listening to the radio waiting to see who would turn up next. At 6.30 I got bored with that game and went down to the pub for something to eat. The beer was a bit naff (read "fizzy"), but the lasagne was really rather good and the welcome was very warm, even though I had committed the cardinal sin of sitting the local Mr. Miserable's favoured bar stool.
A slow trundle back to the site revealed that Bernard and George had arrived, so we picked a spot and set about parking caravans and putting up tents and, most importantly, putting on the kettle. When all was done we sat down in the still incredible sunshine (yes, the sun has been known to shine at Mow Cop) with a nice cuppa, followed shortly by the first beer of the evening. Pure heaven. Or at least it was until The Cows arrived, a rather large motley collection of beasties.The leader of the herd of bullocks then fell instantly in love with me, and, with the assistance of one of his mates, spent the next half hour licking me to death. Wonda also got fetchingly decorated in spit. After a while we noticed that these seemingly dumb creatures were in fact working as a well knit assault team, distracting us at the front while a pincer movement was being made to the rear to perform a final assault on my tent. Desperate measures were required, so we formed ourselves into a circle (not easy with one Land Rover, one
Range Rover, an Escort and a caravan) and made some temporary fencing with Wonda's winch cable, some rope and a collection of old tent poles. This completely foiled The Cows plan, and they soon retired into the sunset. That's that, we thought - stupidly. As we climbed into the car to undertake further research into the quality of the beer at the pub I looked up at The Cows, all lined up along a ridge above us. "It's a bit like Zulu", I remarked - prophetically as it happens.
Back at the pub, the Landlady remarked "See, you just couldn't stay away, could you". "Actually", said George, rather more accurately, " he's found someone stupid enough to drive him down here". Together with the locals, we then proceeded to have a jolly pleasant evening, the highlight of which was a fight. "Mind you're language, please" asked the Gentleman in the corner, the reply to which was some bloke with a dodgy hair cut (not Ant) flying across he bar with fists flying. When the dust had settled, Bernard remarked to the Landlord that perhaps we should find somewhere different for Saturday night. "What, and miss the caberet" I said. "We are not amused" probably summed up the Landlord's expression. Much later we managed to escape from the hostelry and made our way back to the site. "No cows" observed Bernard. "Aye, and no tent" I observed. The two of us, both lightly refreshed, then spent an hour putting the tent back up. I wish we had had a camera on hand the next morning, as we had invented the camping
equivalent of perpetual motion - a tent that by all the laws of physics should not have been up at all still was. After our efforts we sat down for the remainder the evening testing my bottled beer and, I am reliably informed, watching the small UFO's and their mother ships leaving Manchester Airport (presumably The Aliens fly at night because they get a reduction on the landing fees).
Morning finally made it's appearance and I emerged from my tent frozen solid. I made a mental note that it really would have been a good idea to bring a sleeping bag. At least The Cows had decided to call it a day. Rob was the first to arrive, or Ian might have been, I can't quite remember for some reason. "I'm not staying long" Rob announced, "I've told the brickie I've just gone to get some materials". Well at least the latter part of this statement was true. Most of us are content to try doing the impossible with an empty Land Rover. Not Rob though. He had a large lintel, a quantity of concrete blocks and several bags of cement in the back. We set off to explore the site. Inevitably Rob immediately found some nice sticky mud. Equally inevitably he got stuck in it straight away. It took two winches to get him out, and both of us had flat batteries as a result. "That's the most stuck I've seen a Land Rover" I said. "Gottcha now" thought The Aliens.
After driving round more of the site we discovered the mud run. This started off as a well surfaced track gently running down in to a valley. At the bottom was what can best be described as a canal, the approach to which was some lovely mud. Rob was in the lead, and drove as far as the water, followed by me. At the waters edge we stopped, and in a complete break with club tradition decided that we had better check this out before launching ourselves into it. We even got a stick to see how deep the water was in true David Bowyer style. The result was that Rob announced that he didn't have time to spend all day stuck, so I had a fit of bravado and entered the water first. "Humm, not too bad I thought". Until the engine cut out. Miraculously, a can of WD40 appeared and after some faffing about Wonda started. While I was doing this I could feel Rob willing me to fall in, which I very nearly did. Setting off backwards, Wonda managed about ten feet before cutting out again. What with the exersions of rescuing Rob
earlier, the old girls battery was now flat, so Rob towed us out. And kept on towing us out. And some more. Eventually I decided to try bumping Wonda, and low and behold she started.
(Cut to The Aliens control room: The Captain, now fully recovered from the operation, elegantly reaches forward to the weapon control pad and, after a few seconds delicious indecision, gently presses the Improbable Event Beam button. "You think you're mate was stuck, heh heh heh" he chuckles to himself, reaching for the nice gold foil wrapped chocolate biscuit in the assortment that is reserved for Captains and doddery old relatives.)
As a result of this beam, or a lack of concentration which isn't like me at all, Wonda veered to the side of the track, and with some rather interesting grinding noises, came to a halt in a slightly tippy-uppy sort of fashion. Thinking I'd just run off the track, I lit a fag and waited for Rob to put a rope on the front and pull me out. "Ready?" shouts Rob. "Yep" says I, and Rob pulls off. Wonda, however, didn't. She just went sideways. And a lot more tippy-uppy - like well past 45'. Rob strolled over and said "Do you know you're on a bridge?". I looked out of the window and performed the fastest exit stage left ever done, persued by a bear or otherwise. Wonda was indeed on a bridge, just about. The "bushes" at the side of the track were in fact tree tops. The side I had gone off was practically vertical, though narrow. If Wonda fell off, she would probably end up nearly upside down and wedged under the bridge. Had I decided to go to the other side it would have been 30' straight down, and probably quite pai
nful. Wonda was now sitting on her diffs and handbrake drum, ticking over quietly to herself at a ridiculous angle, completely oblivious to her situation.
We needed a plan. Towing with a motor was looking like a decidedly dangerous option, so we attached Wonda's winch to a tree. On command I started the winch, whereupon two things happened; the voltage dropped, due to the flat battery, to such a level that the engine stopped, and Wonda slid sideways. She was now hanging off the bridge by her passenger side springs and the winch cable, and that was all. I was more than a little worried, but Rob was in seventh heaven - he could finally have a play with his nice new shiny snatch block. Before he went off to fetch Bernard and his winch, we jump started Wonda to try and get as much charge as possible in the battery, feeling fairly sure it was going to be needed.
Rob returned not only with the cavalry, but also with the papparatzi and anybody else he could find on the site. No further recovery attempts were allowed until plenty of photographs had been taken. When David Bailey and his chums were all done we resumed our efforts. Even with two winches and Ian's motor on the front going forwards was clearly not going to work - the rear spring was getting perilously near the edge of the bridge and the tree was showing definite signs of movement - I reckon it was just trying to make a run for it. What we needed was a crane, and we didn't have one handy at that particular moment. The solution was for Rob to climb up a tree with his beloved snatch block to get a vertical moment involved (just showing off my 'O' level maths there). While Rob was up the tree his mobile rang again. The brickie had been ringing every ten minutes, and presumably was more than a little suspicious of the excuses he'd been getting. This time it was the woman who's house Rob was allegedly building.
The side of the conversation we could hear went something like this:
Rob : "Hello"
Woman : witter witter
Rob : "I'm up a tree"
Woman : witter witter
Rob : "I'm up a tree and my mates Land Rover has fallen off a bridge"
Woman : witter witter
Rob : "Winching it out"
Woman : witter witter
Rob : "Half a hour"
Woman : witter witter
Rob : "Honestly - trust me, I'm a builder"
Crowd : uncontrollable laughter
Now with Wonda's winch pulling forward, Bernard's pulling up via the snatch block and Ade and Ian's motors pulling forward and to the left we were ready for the final effort - either Wonda would come out or fall off. On the word everyone (for once) did their bit at the same time and Wonda was back on firm ground. well, three wheels were, one was still airborne. I could have just driven away, but we used Ade's highlift to slew Wonda's back round, only because it was the only bit of recovery equipment we hadn't used to date.
(On the space ship the Captain cursed - there went his 250 quid for getting on next Saturday's "Humans Being Incredibly Stupid")
Now came the bit I was dreading - inspecting the damage. There was not a mark on Wonda. When I expressed my surprise, Rob stated the obvious - there couldn't be any damage if there was nothing to hit! We then tried to think of any other vehicle, Discovery and Freelander included, that we could have done what had just done and not leave a mark on it. There are none. For a start, where would you attach the strops on a Jeep or a Fronterra? Perhaps Land Rover might like to think on that when they are "updating" Defender. After putting all the gear away, we returned the tents for a very well earned cup of tea.
Having had a bit of a break, I set off with Ian for a play and Rob set off with his cement. Apparently, a brickie wit a van is incapable of going to the builders merchant and getting some cement, so he had dome precisely nothing and Rob was going to be unable to at partake of the trial on Sunday. Ian also immediately found Robs muddy bit, and also got stuck. After getting him out it became apparent that someone was loosing a lot of oil. It soon transpired that that the adapter for the remote oil filter on Ian's Series I had broken, and a tow back the tents was called for. Subsequent investigation revealed that the front axle had been hammering on this component for some time, but even with Ant finding a stumpy little oil filter to replace it the Series I was not going to be taking part in the trial either. As those that had only come for the day started drifting off it became obvious that RedWhiteAndBlue had now got stuck. He'd driven up onto a track and not looked what was the other side before continuing.
The other side had turned out to be a 3' drainage ditch and his bull-bar had smashed the front wind panels in, thus reinforcing my personal opinion that bull-bars often result in more damage rather than less in off-road type incidents. While all this had been going on MarkDocJess had been solemnly going round knocking canes into the ground ready for Sunday. Unfortunately he did not notice that The Cows had been solemnly following him round pulling them out again. It was about this time that The Archers were spotted. One of them was noted walking round with a pig on his shoulders. Enquiries revealed that there was also a 6' grizzly bear somewhere in the woods. We vowed to take it down to the pub for a pint, but couldn't find it. I suspect that they had realised telling us about it might have been a bit of a blunder. Once RedWhiteAndBlue was mobile again the merry campers were left with the site to ourselves. The four of us, Ian, Bernard, George and me had a superb evening with a nice barbecue followed later b
y my Morrisons Chicken Jalfreizi with Rice and Nan Bread - because I'm a pig. Needless to say the world was put to rights and it only rained after we were past caring. A very poor turn out, but what the hell - we were happy. And so to bed - complete with sleeping bag this time. I only woke up once in the night when in a dream I suddenly remembered that we had not set any defences up against The Cows. Luckily for us, it seems they have Saturday nights off, or go down the pub or something.
And so to Sunday. The happy campers were up bright and early, joined shortly by Rob who had popped up to do the scruitineering. This all went very well, though there are on or two people who might benefit from reading the ARC Handbook - other clubs scruitineers may not be as helpful as we were (though in my experience they usually are). Once MarkDocJess had been out a put all the numbers up and everyone had handed over their hard earned cash we were ready for the off. There's probably little point is going into the details of what transpired, but I will make the following observations. MarkDocJess had read the conditions perfectly (i.e. bone dry) and had set-out 12 very challenging, though all do-able, sections. Colin (Chairman, Glorious) got several clears and used 4 wheel drive all the time. Ian, double driving Ant's trialler made the rest of us look silly - winning th day hands down with, if I remember right, a massive total of 2.
Throughout the day we could see groups of archers wandering around, shooting (if that's the correct phrase - should it be "arching"?) at some remarkably static animals (panic ye not - they were made of polystyrene). As far as I could tell
archery consists mostly of looking for the bloke who missed's arrow. At least they weren't wearing green tights - unless they had their trousers on top.
There was a little more playing after the trial, and Blue Flame managed to get stuck in the mud run. We got him out - just - having used every last available rope and the full length of Wonda's winch cable. And the last of Womda's battery again. After this every one left after a very good day, or rather weekend for those of us that stayed. Those that didn't missed out, but there we go. The final irony was that after all Wonda's adventures I think she was the only vehicle not in need of repair.
And finally this from me again:
No doubt you have all come across the Mercedes advert with the Janis Joplin song "oh Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz. Well, I was having a poke around in my archives and found the original of this song. In fact, it's so original that the few people who know who Janis Joplin is have never heard of it. It is also prophectic, being written in about 1967. It goes like this:
Oh Lord! Won't you buy me a Defender One Ten
My friends all drive 90's, I need to make amends
It's worked hard all it's life now
The old one's a friend
But Lord won't you buy me a brand new One Ten
--
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