Words by Mike Cuff
Pictures by Helena Gasser, Caroline Kell and Tim Aston.

Arriving at the site late, this years delay (excuse) being caused by the lock on my Rodeo back door being frozen solid stopping me from putting my dog "Twiggy" in the back, I found the usual subjects plus a collection of new J33P members, including Caroline Kell from Ireland in a Cherokee. Caroline was visiting the West Country over Christmas. After the usual round of formalities, apart from myself and Eugenio, everybody drove off to explore the site. Eugenio going off to setup a 4 stage trial while I started to explore on foot with Twiggy for company. It was not long before I came across drivers tackling an assortment of obstacles, including steep ascents, descents, mud holes and rock climbs. Initially as it was lovely frosty wintery morning the ground was pretty hard making the going fairly easy, although the mud holes had to be treated with respect as they were covered in ice sheets a couple of inches in thickness. As the morning progressed, the ground progressively thawed out making conditions very slippery indeed.

Two things standout from my walking tour, Stu Gepp and his convoy of Cherokees and the noise when Simon Redmond"s front stub axle literally exploded. Stu kindly volunteered to look after three Cherokee owners who were fairly new to offroading, Stu is a long term Cherry owner with a wealth of experience, chatting to a couple of the owners over lunch his advice was greatly appreciated.

Knowing Simon from previous events I pointed him at a short incline with steep sides and a nasty little hump at the end, an incline that every body had failed to get up. On Simon"s last attempt, he tried to power over it, the end result being a terrific cracking noise, the noise coming from one of his front stub axles. After inspecting the surviving bits of the it turned out that the axle had already been damaged as the fracture point showed signs of rust, Simon had been on borrowed time so to speak.

After several hours playing in the cold everybody drove down to the Cold Comfort pub for lunch, arriving at the pub we bumped into Mark Gasser and several other Portsmouth members. As usual, the pub service was very good, catering for a 36 eventees and Twiggy. When I pre-ordered the food prior to Christmas, as a special treat I asked them to put aside a bowl of meat for Twiggy. And what a bowl it was, a huge selection of chicken, turkey and ham. Some of the humans looked positively green with envy!!!

Post lunch we all headed back to the site, while some members continued to explore the site the majority got ready to test out their driving skills on Eugenio"s trial course. Kevin in his yellow V8 powered Simex running CJ was first up, after clearing the first few gates he got stuck in a little hole! His recovery involved a bit of tree surgery and two winches.

After some alterations, various people had a go at the section, nobody clearing all 10 gates as the ground had turned into a substances with similar properties to grease. The most impressive was Rich Sims in his Disco, Rich has the advantage of very narrow aggressive MTs that current through to the underlying rock, the Jeeps on wider tyres tended to skim along the surface.

The next stage involved negotiating an axle twisting gully. The gully successfully stopped several Jeeps, Des Perkins coming to a stop with both driven wheels in mid air! Jeeps with better articulation cleared the gully with out a problem.

After another 2 stages Dave Allwright aka Diesel Dave narrowly pipped Richard Sims to win the trial by getting a clear on stage 4. All in all the trial was enjoyed by all who took part. Just before the close Mark Gasser and Diesel Dave spent a few minutes playing on the some of the hill at the back of the site.

The event closed at 4pm with Dave being presented with his prize by Eugenio, a Canyon Rockcrawler strap donated by MDG. We will be running this event again, you never know maybe I will even arrive on time!