1996 motoring memories Lakeland by Range Rover

Most of my childhood journeys were spent on the side-facing bench seat in the back of a Land Rover One Ten, but the ones I really enjoyed involved much comfier jaunts up the M6 in my father’s Range Rover.

This shot was taken the same summer as our Burford photo, albeit 220 miles north at Brockhole, the Lake District National Park Authority’s visitor centre. We’d often call there on the way back from fell-walking trips and I suspect this would have been one of those days when Dad would have been pleased that my younger sister Rebecca and I had scaled Causey Pike’s summit, because he’s allowed us to clamber onto the bonnet.

It looks peaceful, but just behind the dry stone wall the same sort of tourists who plied their Granadas through Burford would have been queuing up in one of the A591’s traffic jams en-route to Ambleside.

The Range Rover’s still with us. While it was trusty family transport two decades ago, it’s now a classic car reserved for show outings.