We went on an event called 'Land Rover all 4x4 Charity Vehicle quest' on Sunday. It was only £5 to enter, and had a very good turn out, more than 60 trucks. It was basically a Treasure hunt (routebook with questions to answer alomg the way) but on roads and byways, on Dartmoor and the South Hams. It finished at a hotel in Torquay (that didn't seem to mind a car park full of 4x4's and lots of customers wearing boots!) And there we handed in our answers and swapped tales of green lanes with other people on the event.
There were 4 routes to choose from, Road, Road and easy green lanes, road and medium green lanes, or road and harder green lanes.
Here is a pic of some of the trucks at the start at Hay Tor.
As it was my wife Emily's birthday and it was the first time she had done any off roading, we thought it would be best to go for the road and harder green lanes, as the route included the infamous Simms Hill, which I have attempted in the trials car but never climbed, it is very steep, and is stepped slippery granite...
After some worrying whether we had made the right descision we set off, trucks doing the easier routes went first, as they were going to approach Simms from the top and watch the trucks doing the harder route climb it.
As we got near the bottom of Simms, Emily decided perhaps she would rather not start off roading on a very steep hill with loads of people watching, so we swapped over, and lined up at the bottom of the hill watching a land rover 90 climbing. A land rover 90 has very flexible axles but even this didn't seem to be making it easy for it!
Can even be attempted with leaf springs!
Well I put the 80 in low range, and the auto box in L, front and rear diff locks in, and it just drove up it like a road... we got to the top with people cheering and as I had my window down we heard one of the spectators say 'well he didn't have any problem did he?'
We were very impressed with the 80, and Emily straight away wanted to drive again, later in the day she said had Simms been the last lane of the day she would have had a go, but that doesnt matter there is always next time.
We carried on to the next lane which was another I knew from car trialling, called Tipley, it is fairly steep and rough, loose fist sized rocks apart from half way up where a seam of granite runs across diagonally and creates a tricky slab to climb, which tries to push you across into the bank. Again, no problem for the 80.