After more than six months away from his beloved Norfolk, and with his Ninety’s MOT due, Dave can’t resist the call to Breckland

HE recent lockdown meant I hadn’t been home to my native Norfolk for more than six months – the longest I’ve ever been away – but with the MOT tests for both my Disco 1 and Ninety due, I had the perfect excuse to get across and see my mechanic mate Nigel Hammond, who does such an excellent job of keeping my elderly Land Rovers roadworthy and in top-top condition.

He’s based at Horningtoft, in the middle of the county, but I couldn’t resist extending my trip by a day and travelling in my 1984 Ninety

Tto Breckland in south Norfolk. My usual pub at Barton Bendish had yet to re-open following the Covid-19 shutdown, but I soon booked a berth at the lovely Swan Inn, at Hilborough. It’s a pub I’d visited before, but not for a long time – more than 20 years, in fact, since I chose it for a lunchtime stop when driving the Peddars Way with the Breckland Land Rover Club, back in the late 1990s. That had been an amazing trip that inspired me to explore more greenlanes and write about them, which was pretty groundbreaking at that time, because the Land Rover mags were mainly full of overseas adventures. It seemed nobody had thought about writing about the brilliant fun to be had driving your Land Rover on the ancient unpaved roads of the British Isles.

Norfolk, of course, is the perfect county for greenlaning, because there are so many byways you can legally drive – especially in Breckland with its countless miles of forest tracks on sandy soil, which doesn’t get rutted and undrivable in wet or wintry weather. Not that it was either for my trip in high summer. Instead I was treated to a spectacular display of colourful wild flowers. Because most of the tracks are through either forestry or military land, they have never been treated with modern artificial fertilisers or herbicides. As a result, the natural flora flourishes to a degree that most of the countryside hasn’t seen since before World War II.

Towering wild verbascum, with its distinctive tall stems smothered in bright yellow flowers was there in abundance, along with deep blue cornflowers and a host of other species that I’m afraid I couldn’t identify. I enjoyed a spectacular sunrise through the scots pines, all alone apart from Billy the Wonderdog and a lot of deer. Most of them soon scattered at my approach, although an inquisitive fallow deer mother and baby obligingly lingered on the edge of the track long enough for me to grab the camera and photograph them.

One of the strangest sights here is the old pastures that haven’t seen livestock for many decades. The grass is still kept short by the vast numbers of rabbits that thrive in this heathland, but they leave alone the sea of deadly ragwort, in full yellow bloom at the time of my visit. It’s a plant you never see on fields used for growing hay or grazing livestock, because it is lethal to cows, sheep and horses, and ruthlessly dug out by farmers.

There’s a certain irony that this peaceful corner of Britain remains unspoilt mainly because of the threat of war. Much of the area is a military firing range and out of bounds, but you’re unlikely to wander

Wild verbascum, tame track. Greenlaning in Brecks