Well, where to start
Following the last Lincomb, Chris Green90 suggested that we head on up to him for a weekends laning around the NYM's and the Peak's. So following the exchange of a number of PM's a date and a plan was thrashed through. Sadly though a week or so before the trip Chris had to cancel due to circumstances beyond his control!
Deferring our NYM's and Peak's trip to another time when Chris would be able to join us and not wanting to let an already Green Carded weekend get away from us all, we decided to relocate this trip to South Wales as we had felt in the past that we still had a lot to explore in this area and Chris's unenforceable circumstances had presented an ideal opportunity for us to do just this. This also gave us the opportunity to invite iwan_t24 along as he had missed out on the trip when Ben rolled LJ, due to his own unforeseen circumstances.
Very quickly a new plan started to come together...........
Consisting of us all meeting up at a previously used camp site in the Brechfa Forest, west of Abergorlech on the Friday evening with Iwan and his m8 Matt joining us early Saturday morning as they only live a couple of hours north from this site near Montgomery. I would not be able to leave with Rob and Dan until late Friday afternoon and planned to be at the camp site for around 19:30Hrs. Giles (m8 with black LR90) left Essex early to mid morning on Friday with the intention of hooking up with Mog (m8 with blue Disco) somewhere east of Birmingham and getting a few lanes done en-route to the camp site.
Mog had been working up in Middlesbrough all week and had taken the Disco intending upon meeting up with us on his way back down from Middlesbrough. Prior to our trip away and his trip up to Middlesbrough, Mog had given the Disco a full service including a cam belt, that was due. While doing the cam belt he had decided to replace the crank shaft seal while it was all in bits (nowt wrong with it), but why not while it’s all apart. By the time he had got up to Middlesbrough in the Disco she had spat the lower crank seal out and dropped all her oil!!! With no other option and being so far from home with a weekends laning trip the up and coming weekend he decided to drop the Disco into the local Land Rover dealers (Main Dealers) with the instruction 'Please could you fix that for me by Friday?!!' and they duly did!!!
So Friday comes and we all start heading towards our rendezvous in the Brechfa Forest. My journey is just awful, the A14 is a horrific car park its entire length and my camp site arrival time starts slipping further and further away!!! I give Giles a call to give him my good news and this is when he tells me about Mog's crank shaft seal saga, but he then adds to this that he’s met up with him and they think that it's still leaking even though the main dealer has allegedly fixed it, but not enough to be too much of a concern!!! Then about an hour later I get another call from Giles to say that they had to dive into a nearby town to get Mog a new power steering belt as his one had shredded itself! Upon fitting the new one though they discovered that the power steering pump was fubard and it was in fact the massive amount of play in the power steering pulley that had shredded the belt!!! Not to worry though as they had found a Motor Factors in Leominster that could get one in for midday the next day (Saturday) and had ordered it! Giles then towed Mog to a public car park in Bucknell and then gone off in search of somewhere to wild camp. It was at this point and looking at my map I was almost on the phone to Tony Symonds (TonyS) asking if we could emergency camp on the farm, but with that thought going through my head I got a text from Giles with coordinates for our new wild camping location for Friday evening in Bucknell Woods. While I still had a good mobile phone signal, I pulled over and called Iwan, filled him in with all that had gone on and gave him our new camp site location, as it turned out it was closer to him than the original one.
With everyone now up to speed I set off towards the new location to find Giles and Mog. Truth be told it suited me in the end as my new arrival time at camp Brechfa had slipped on to 21:00Hrs due to the nightmare that was the A14 and my arrival time at the new camp site was a much earlier 19:40Hrs.
And here it is camp Bucknell, next to a well used ByWay through the woods.
First thing Saturday morning Giles, Luke and Mog are up with the larks and tow the Disco into Leominster, leaving it and Mog in the carpark outside the Motor Factors waiting for his new power steering pump. The plan is for Mog to get it fitted as soon as it arrives and meet up with us later on that day.
Me and the boys finish striking our camp and wait for Iwan and Matt to arrive.
Quick light saber battle for Robert and Dan, while dad does all the hard work again!!!
Then as if by magic Iwan and Matt arrive.
Closely followed by Giles returning from towing Mog into Leominster. At this point in time we have no plan and no route in mind, so it was out with the maps, laptops and iPads onto Iwans bonnet and a plan was put together comprising of five or six lanes including the lane that we did in the snow back in April near to Montgomery that we fondly call 'Bastard Lane'.
While we were planing, Dan found himself a pet beetle in the woods. He cried when I made him release it back into the wild, bless.
and were off..................
Here it is then 'Bastard Lane'!!!! This time for a change we decide to do it from the bottom to the top. Considering how dry it was and that we were going up this time it was still a nicely challenging lane requiring a reasonable amount of technique and kit to navigate. Its well worth a look if your in that area and I'd be happy to PM you the coordinates for the top and bottom if you fancy a look at it.
Once we were all over the first challenging part of the lane, Mog slipped from off of his rear bumper while loading kit back into his truck and fell straight down ballerina style with all his weight onto his left toes, point down!!!! Resulting in a such a painful injury that he passed out for a moment!!!! We got him laid down with his feet elevated and both shoes and socks off so I could compare legs and gave him a good examination. While I was doing this I got Giles to jot onto a bit of paper our exact location in case we needed more professional help in a hurry. After a few minutes and once things had calmed down a bit I applied a chemical cold compress and gave him a couple of Ibuprofen to help with the pain and any inflammation. After a further 15/20min he felt able to get back up onto his feet, all be it still in some pain and with a limp. Lucky chap in hindsight, could have been far more serious considering how high he fell from and in what way!!!!
Last photo as we left the end of Bastard Lane and what a challenge once again.
This was a cracking little lane, about 2K in length with a tumbled down cottage toward the end, but it just came to a dead end where the owner of the land at the end of the lane had stopped any access out onto the tarmac by locking the gates and putting up big F' O' signs!! So we turned around and drove it back the other way.
After this we waved goodbye to Iwan and Matt for the night agreeing to meet up with them Sunday morning at Iwan's place. We then drove to the quarry camp site near to the Clun Forest that a number of ELCOC members will be familiar with.
Here's a photo of Rob and Dan watching SpiderMan on the iPad while eating their dinner, beef casserole with broccoli and new potatoes.
It rained and rained and rained, proper down poor style!!! Nice and refreshing though after all the heat.
I'll have to do Sunday tomorrow, but it's worth the wait
Following the last Lincomb, Chris Green90 suggested that we head on up to him for a weekends laning around the NYM's and the Peak's. So following the exchange of a number of PM's a date and a plan was thrashed through. Sadly though a week or so before the trip Chris had to cancel due to circumstances beyond his control!
Deferring our NYM's and Peak's trip to another time when Chris would be able to join us and not wanting to let an already Green Carded weekend get away from us all, we decided to relocate this trip to South Wales as we had felt in the past that we still had a lot to explore in this area and Chris's unenforceable circumstances had presented an ideal opportunity for us to do just this. This also gave us the opportunity to invite iwan_t24 along as he had missed out on the trip when Ben rolled LJ, due to his own unforeseen circumstances.
Very quickly a new plan started to come together...........
Consisting of us all meeting up at a previously used camp site in the Brechfa Forest, west of Abergorlech on the Friday evening with Iwan and his m8 Matt joining us early Saturday morning as they only live a couple of hours north from this site near Montgomery. I would not be able to leave with Rob and Dan until late Friday afternoon and planned to be at the camp site for around 19:30Hrs. Giles (m8 with black LR90) left Essex early to mid morning on Friday with the intention of hooking up with Mog (m8 with blue Disco) somewhere east of Birmingham and getting a few lanes done en-route to the camp site.
Mog had been working up in Middlesbrough all week and had taken the Disco intending upon meeting up with us on his way back down from Middlesbrough. Prior to our trip away and his trip up to Middlesbrough, Mog had given the Disco a full service including a cam belt, that was due. While doing the cam belt he had decided to replace the crank shaft seal while it was all in bits (nowt wrong with it), but why not while it’s all apart. By the time he had got up to Middlesbrough in the Disco she had spat the lower crank seal out and dropped all her oil!!! With no other option and being so far from home with a weekends laning trip the up and coming weekend he decided to drop the Disco into the local Land Rover dealers (Main Dealers) with the instruction 'Please could you fix that for me by Friday?!!' and they duly did!!!
So Friday comes and we all start heading towards our rendezvous in the Brechfa Forest. My journey is just awful, the A14 is a horrific car park its entire length and my camp site arrival time starts slipping further and further away!!! I give Giles a call to give him my good news and this is when he tells me about Mog's crank shaft seal saga, but he then adds to this that he’s met up with him and they think that it's still leaking even though the main dealer has allegedly fixed it, but not enough to be too much of a concern!!! Then about an hour later I get another call from Giles to say that they had to dive into a nearby town to get Mog a new power steering belt as his one had shredded itself! Upon fitting the new one though they discovered that the power steering pump was fubard and it was in fact the massive amount of play in the power steering pulley that had shredded the belt!!! Not to worry though as they had found a Motor Factors in Leominster that could get one in for midday the next day (Saturday) and had ordered it! Giles then towed Mog to a public car park in Bucknell and then gone off in search of somewhere to wild camp. It was at this point and looking at my map I was almost on the phone to Tony Symonds (TonyS) asking if we could emergency camp on the farm, but with that thought going through my head I got a text from Giles with coordinates for our new wild camping location for Friday evening in Bucknell Woods. While I still had a good mobile phone signal, I pulled over and called Iwan, filled him in with all that had gone on and gave him our new camp site location, as it turned out it was closer to him than the original one.
With everyone now up to speed I set off towards the new location to find Giles and Mog. Truth be told it suited me in the end as my new arrival time at camp Brechfa had slipped on to 21:00Hrs due to the nightmare that was the A14 and my arrival time at the new camp site was a much earlier 19:40Hrs.
And here it is camp Bucknell, next to a well used ByWay through the woods.
First thing Saturday morning Giles, Luke and Mog are up with the larks and tow the Disco into Leominster, leaving it and Mog in the carpark outside the Motor Factors waiting for his new power steering pump. The plan is for Mog to get it fitted as soon as it arrives and meet up with us later on that day.
Me and the boys finish striking our camp and wait for Iwan and Matt to arrive.
Quick light saber battle for Robert and Dan, while dad does all the hard work again!!!
Then as if by magic Iwan and Matt arrive.
Closely followed by Giles returning from towing Mog into Leominster. At this point in time we have no plan and no route in mind, so it was out with the maps, laptops and iPads onto Iwans bonnet and a plan was put together comprising of five or six lanes including the lane that we did in the snow back in April near to Montgomery that we fondly call 'Bastard Lane'.
While we were planing, Dan found himself a pet beetle in the woods. He cried when I made him release it back into the wild, bless.
and were off..................
Here it is then 'Bastard Lane'!!!! This time for a change we decide to do it from the bottom to the top. Considering how dry it was and that we were going up this time it was still a nicely challenging lane requiring a reasonable amount of technique and kit to navigate. Its well worth a look if your in that area and I'd be happy to PM you the coordinates for the top and bottom if you fancy a look at it.
Once we were all over the first challenging part of the lane, Mog slipped from off of his rear bumper while loading kit back into his truck and fell straight down ballerina style with all his weight onto his left toes, point down!!!! Resulting in a such a painful injury that he passed out for a moment!!!! We got him laid down with his feet elevated and both shoes and socks off so I could compare legs and gave him a good examination. While I was doing this I got Giles to jot onto a bit of paper our exact location in case we needed more professional help in a hurry. After a few minutes and once things had calmed down a bit I applied a chemical cold compress and gave him a couple of Ibuprofen to help with the pain and any inflammation. After a further 15/20min he felt able to get back up onto his feet, all be it still in some pain and with a limp. Lucky chap in hindsight, could have been far more serious considering how high he fell from and in what way!!!!
Last photo as we left the end of Bastard Lane and what a challenge once again.
This was a cracking little lane, about 2K in length with a tumbled down cottage toward the end, but it just came to a dead end where the owner of the land at the end of the lane had stopped any access out onto the tarmac by locking the gates and putting up big F' O' signs!! So we turned around and drove it back the other way.
After this we waved goodbye to Iwan and Matt for the night agreeing to meet up with them Sunday morning at Iwan's place. We then drove to the quarry camp site near to the Clun Forest that a number of ELCOC members will be familiar with.
Here's a photo of Rob and Dan watching SpiderMan on the iPad while eating their dinner, beef casserole with broccoli and new potatoes.
It rained and rained and rained, proper down poor style!!! Nice and refreshing though after all the heat.
I'll have to do Sunday tomorrow, but it's worth the wait
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