Snakes and Ladas
Dave ponders the ups and downs of life, while exploring the best of the British countryside in his elderly Ninety and Discovery 1
THEY SAY that with age comes wisdom. To that I’d add forgetfulness. I rang my mate, Norfolk Nigel, for advice on a broken bonnet catch. He gladly supplied that advice, along with a timely reminder that the MOT was due on my Ninety. Hence, a few days later, I was making my way to his workshop near Fakenham so that he could give it the once-over before its test.
I was fairly confident it would pass apart from one nagging doubt. It had started leaving small pools of oil beneath the engine and I couldn’t work out where it was coming from, as I couldn’t see an obvious leak anywhere. It was worrying, because I’d heard MOT testers were getting much stricter about fluid leaks.
Nigel’s first job, though, was to repair the broken bonnet release cable. He’d got a replacement ready, but it turned out it wasn’t needed. The problem was caused by a securing clip that had come loose, allowing too much slack in the cable to operate the catch. It was soon fixed.
While the bonnet was up, he quickly found the reason for the pools of fluid below the vehicle. It wasn’t a failed gasket or seal (which I’d suspected) but a seeping leak-off pipe between two of the injectors on top of the engine. It wasn’t a serious fuel leak, but it was enough for a few drops to make their way down the side of the dirty engine and cause oily pools to accumulate underneath. Nigel had new leak-off pipes in stock, so he replaced them all.
The 1984 vehicle passed its test that afternoon with flying colours, apart from an advisory warning of corrosion in the passenger footwell. That will have to be sorted by next year, but in the meantime the old bus has got a clean bill of health and will see plenty of action through the warmer months.
But for my next trip to Norfolk, a couple of weeks later, I took the Discovery, simply because I had a lot of kit to carry for three photoshoots. I also had Billy the Wonderdog with me, along with my own stuff for a couple of nights away. I stayed at my favourite pub, the Buckinghamshire Arms, which overlooks the grandeur of Blickling Hall, the stately home where the ill-fated Anne Boleyn grew up. She was, of course, the second of King Henry VIII’S six wives.
I love Blickling partly because it is central to everywhere in my home county, but mainly because it is the sort of place where time seems to stand still. Its pub is packed with characters, most of whom drive Land Rovers. They seem to be essential in this corner of the world – and long may it remain so.
Over the next three days I get to meet a couple whose wedding car was the same Series I that the groom’s parents were married in, over 40 years earlier; a shy collector whose impressive fleet of Land Rovers includes the earliest Disco 3 in existence; and a farmer whose everyday mode of transport is a Series III. But you’ll be reading about them all in LRM in due course, so I won’t go into details now.
After a couple of days of all-out Land Rovering, it was good to get out from behind the wheel and take a walk around the lake in Blickling Park, from which you get the best views of Blickling Hall. It really is a very magical place and you can’t help but wonder how much poor Anne Boleyn must have missed the place
when she was locked up in Tower of London, awaiting execution on a trumped-up charge by her husband. Back in Tudor times, monarchs were ruthless, manipulative and evil. These days the royal family can afford to be nice – and leave all the nasty stuff to politicians.
No trip to Norfolk would be complete without a drive through Breckland. One of my favourite parts of the Brecks is Shouldham Warren, where I slowly bounced down a sandy track, deserted apart from an elderly Lada driven by an even more elderly woman, coming the other way. A little later I spotted something ahead that made me pull up and get out to investigate. It was a snake – to be precise an adder, Britain’s only venomous reptile. Unfortunately, it was not basking in the sun as I’d thought, but had been run over by a previous driver. Surely it couldn’t have been the Lada driver? Snakes and Ladas? Unreal.
I took a photo of the dead snake anyway, before I carried it to the side of the track and buried it under a pile of leaves and branches. They are rare creatures so it is a great shame to come across one that has met such an ignominious end.
It was a sad event, but I soon cheered up as the early-morning sun beat down on the woodland. The rhododendrons were in full magenta bloom and the shafts of sunlight broke through the branches of the Scots pines like spotlights in a theatre. Billy was caught in one of them, looking up apparently in wonderment at the source of the sudden illumination. I had my camera with me, so I snapped the scene
quickly before he went off sniffing along the trail of a rabbit or squirrel.
Back home in Northamptonshire, we’ve had a series of misty mornings followed by sunny days. It really is good to enjoy such beautiful weather after that long, cold winter and non-existent spring. This is such a great time to be out in your Land Rovers, I’m sure you’ll agree.