PH Fleet Update: Land Rover Defender

£25 for a couple of hours of dirty fun? Count us in...

Not being blessed with rolling acres, a racing car to tow, or any urgent need to inspect overhead power cables on top of the Sussex Downs, I'm aware of the slightly fraudulent nature of my love for the PH long term Defender.

Fruit picking. Quite dull really.

So in an attempt to assuage the guilt and get a suitable lifestyle, I spent part of last weekend doing a 'River Cottage'-type thing with Mrs-R in Notts. (The county, not a yoga position.) With its chequer-plate wing tops, the Defender was pressed successfully into service as a mobile picking platform for the fruit of the Blackthorn tree, which we fully intend to convert into syrupy Sloe Gin in industrial quantities. (At this point I should respectfully remind PHers that off-roading and alcohol don't happily mix but, as my friend Mr D and - not so happily - the green-keeping committee of Highgate Golf Club might attest, this is not a universal truth.)

While picking Sloes is a worthwhile pastime in itself, it's not a role that taxes the finest 4x4 by far. So that same afternoon we bunged the berries in the freezer and hot-footed it further up the A1, where cars like ours are allowed to 'Pay & Play' at the Frickley Off-Road Centre.

Off-roading. Never dull...

At a cost of £25 per vehicle, a 'Pay & Play' session is a great way to experience off-roading, and at Frickley there's a wide variety of challenges from simple muddy tracks to bottomless boggy pits. In theory it should be suitable for anyone with a yearning to test the family SUV off the tarmac, and we expected to find a few more shiny family wagons out enjoying a mud-lark.

So much for the theory. In reality, we arrived to find a car park full of heavily modified vehicles that would have looked at home on a Mad Max set, and a bunch of hardened mud-pluggers looking at us 'funny' for turning up in a brand new Defender. At least until I'd explained the Defender was, (ahem!) borrowed, that is...

...if not always strictly fun!

In truth, we were never going to be that adventurous, because the more challenging parts of the Frickley Off-Road Centre have the potential to cause serious damage to man and machine, a fact that some of the more spirited mud-pluggers were delightfully keen to prove. In particular, the highly-modified Suzuki Jeep-mounted element displayed a gratifyingly lunatic attitude towards a range of insurmountable/impassable topographical features, with often spectacular results.

A Land Rover contingent was out in force too, but we didn't see another one like ours - unmodified and running road tyres. A lift kit, mud tyres and a snorkel seems to be the minimum requirement for the regulars, but some people had clearly invested a lot more time and money than that. We particularly admired another LWB Defender with external roll cage, bucket seats, and (whisper this) Toyota Land Cruiser axles - presumably cannibalised for its diff locks.

Modded Landies were out in force

SWB Defenders have a distinct advantage over long 'uns like ours on the rough stuff, a fact we managed to prove early-on by getting our side rail beached on a mud bank. Fortunately there's an obvious code of honour amongst off-roaders, and towing other 4x4s out of the mire seems to be part of the fun. Things were complicated slightly by the fact that everyone else's supertanker-grade towing shackle was far too big for our Landie's little towing eyes, the front one of which is partially obscured by the sump guard. Ho-hum! No matter, we were dragged out backwards by the tow-hitch instead.

Later on, that same tow hitch mounting helped us get properly stuck in some very deep ruts when, unable to proceed any further forwards, it bulldozed mud as we reversed creating an effective buffer to progress. This time the site tractor was required for extraction duties, at which point the marshals supplied the good-humoured assistance.

Hitch mount helped get us stuck

In fact, we were really struck by the friendliness of everybody we met on site - punters and staff alike - which quickly took the edge off any nervousness we felt turning up as 'outsiders'. So if you've got an off-roader that's never been properly dirty, don't be shy and have go. There's plenty of easy terrain that a standard 4x4 can cope with, lots of good-natured advice, and help when it's needed, too.

Just don't tell the chaps with the tractor that PistonHeads sent you...

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Fleckers

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