Words by Chris Mccollum

After the Culmhead Challenge event, I was looking forward to another drive around day similar to the Bampton DRD, and I wasn’t disappointed.

We met up with James in the same camping field used at the challenge event, alarm bells ringing already! We must be using some of the tracks at the challenge event. I was right, it wasn’t long before the first winch was put into use, helping the blue 90 up a slippery slope. Jim, in his nice shiny Toyota Land Cruiser, sensibly backed out of that one, everyone else with a bit of commitment, made it to the top. The course was very tight, fighting off a lot branches poking through the windows was fun, until I passed a holly bush and forgot to close the window, ouch! Jim had trouble with the tight corners and had to keep shuffling around, and it wasn’t too long before his nice shiny running boards took a battering after hooking up on a fallen tree. Bit of pushing and shoving and he was off again.

It was a nice and relaxed pace, with regular stops to check out the terrain ahead, and watch everybody’s line through each section, before trying it myself. Jim got into regular scrapes and the sweepstake on which part of his Toyota truck was going to get damaged was won by everybody, Sorry Jim. It was becoming evident that James isn’t used to do long wheel base vehicle events.

A well earned lunch break was followed by a trip into the quarry site. What I didn’t realise from the challenge event was how big the site is. Apparently its some 1,500 acres so there was no danger of going over the same tracks.

There was a nice boggy section which Tim, our support guy at the back, got duly stuck in. Using my Jeep as an anchor point he pulled himself free. James then led us onto a small river section with a steep entry point. His father at the wheel, James guided him in, splat!! Oops that didn’t go to well, some more winching got him free, the blue 90 took an interesting line which saw him through ok, I took a similar one to James and with a bit of grunt I made it across. Tim was last and tried to do the same as me with his V8 land rover but couldn’t quite manage it, and the winch had to come out again.

Another river section was explored and a further wooded section before finally ending up back in the Challenge event quarry. This time Jim got his Toyota well and truly stuck, requiring two winches to manoeuvre him out. Tim found himself stuck trying to get round a tree in a bog, Funny how the last 15mins of the day can take the longest.

Thanks to James for an eventful day. Would love to come back and do it again. It was nice to meet some new faces; a good day was had by all. It would have been nice to be in the company of a few fellow Jeepers. But hey, I guess a drive around day is not everyone’s cup of tea.

Some pictures from the event courtesy of 4x4 Adventures