On the road again
The unpaved roads, that is. Our Dave reckons there’s never been a better time for exploring the greenlanes of Britain now lockdown’s ending
LOCKDOWN brought out the best and worst in people. Hard-working NHS staff and carers risked their lives to save others; neighbours looked after each other. In my little corner of the country of Northamptonshire, just about everyone observed the Covid-19 rules. That was the best of it. The worst was the selfish actions of the few that couldn’t give a toss about anyone else.
The man who runs the country — oops, I mean the PM’S top adviser — Dominic Cummings, was the worst offender with his trip from London to Durham to seek child care, followed by his trip to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight. Shame he was driving a Discovery Sport. Gives fellow Land Rover owners a bad name.
The worst offender I personally came across was a Land Rover owner, too. He arrived in our village one Friday at the height of the pandemic, parked his rather tasty Defender 110 camper in the village hall car park and stayed there for three days and nights. When challenged by the chairman of the village hall committee, he claimed he was homeless — a fact later disproved when a policeman arrived, made checks and found out he lived in Market Harborough.
He promised to move once he’d had his supper, but didn’t. Instead he tore down the security fence of the neighbouring pub (at that time out of bounds to the public) so he could launch his canoe from the pub garden. When the police arrived the following day, he claimed he had gone home and come back again — a lie I was happy to disprove to the police, because I’d photographed his pitch at 5.00 am, complete with pots and pans left out from his supper the night before.
Just to rub salt into the wound, the man’s home address is just ten miles outside the new exclusion zone placed around Leicester because coronavirus has flared up there again. At the time of writing it is the worst-affected area in the country.
The policeman said he would be reporting him, but I don’t expect he’ll be prosecuted. Nearly all the idiots who broke the lockdown rules, risking others’ lives in the process, got no more than a ticking off, which seems very unfair to those of us who stuck to the letter of the law.
His Defender (whose number plate I’ve obscured to save his blushes) was much too
good for him. It was a 300Tdi that had been nicely kitted out with fold-out eating area and what appeared to be a wood-burning stove on the back. Vehicles like that are usually driven by people I like.
This wasn’t the only example of a Land Rover being used badly in my village. A tree surgeon called out to deal with some overgrown willows by the river managed to fell a huge branch into the water. It had to be got out, smartish, before it was allowed to drift downstream and smash into the water mill, so he attached a steel cable and operated the electric winch on his Range Rover. Unfortunately the strain was too much for the cable, which snapped with a loud crack and recoiled back into the car, smashing the windscreen. It could so easily have hit either the man or his son, who was with him at the time. That cable could have killed them. A winch in the wrong hands is every bit as dangerous as a chainsaw.
Never, ever, use a winch without a drogue over the cable — or at least an old coat or heavy floor mat — anything to absorb the lethal pent-up energy of a snapped hawser.
To make matters worse, the tree surgeon then got stuck in soft mud by the river while attempting to tow out the offending branch. It certainly wasn’t his day and I bet he won’t do any of that again.
A more welcome Land Rover in the village is the Td5 hi-capacity pick-up my farmer mate Martin has just bought. It’s the only vehicle I usually see first thing in the morning when I walk Billy the Wonderdog across the local meadows at daybreak. Martin and his partner Jane slowly drive over the many hills and rough ground as they check out their flocks of sheep, including some rare breeds.
I’ve known Martin for about 25 years now. Land Rovers are the only cars he’s ever owned. He started back in the early 1990s with an ex-military Series III Lightweight, which was followed by a naturally-aspirated diesel Ninety. Various other Defenders followed until two or three years ago when he treated himself to a Discovery 3. Although it was more comfortable, and ideal for towing a
trailer of sheep to the market, he didn’t like the fact that it was harder to clean than his previous hose-out Land Rovers — which of course is why he chopped it in for a Defender pick-up, which he immediately fitted with an Ifor Williams canopy for security.
I visited the Ifor Williams factory a few years back when I was in North Wales and I was staggered by the size of the operation. I shouldn’t have been — farmers love their Ifor Williams trailers and canopies as much as they love their Land Rovers.
One of the other good things to come out of lockdown was the reduced pollution levels, | caused in part by the massive reduction in airline flights. It made me and many others realise how much damage is caused by folk who take flights all over the world, often for frivolous reasons, and destroying the planet in the process. It’s such a shame that people fly to hotter climes to do little more than roast themselves on a beach all day when there is so much to do and explore in this country.
I’ve decided I won’t be leaving on any jet planes any time soon. I’ve already been greenlaning in every corner of this country, but now I’m eager to do so more. There is, after all, no better way of seeing the countryside I love so much. Social distancing is never a problem in remote places.