"Living with Larry" my Land Rover Discovery 1 300TDI and overland travel: February 2013

Our 1st 4x4 green laning trip

When I bought Larry, I decided I would go out on some UK green lanes before we did anything serious overseas. I would like to say we did this to test the car’s capabilities for our future overland adventures, but in reality it was for a bit of fun and a weekend away.

So the plan was hatched as follows, do the basics of under body protection on the car and then go green laning and find out what I need to do next to improve the car by seeing what happens when away.

Anyway having never done any extensive green lanes before I thought it would be good to go on a 4x4 guided tour. I contacted a number of companies and talked to them and they generally seemed to come into the following groups.

Guided, but with no support, with camping

Guided, with nothing not even camping

Guided, with support and camping arranged

Also, I wanted to ensure if when off road something broke on my Discovery 1 I would be in safe hands to either fix it, or tow me out.

From a location point of view it seemed to be Wales, Yorkshire or Sailsbury Plain. I thought about Wales a bit (or not a lot), but after working there for two years I did not want to risk the weather. It really does rain a lot in Wales, I know I lived there for a short while, during that time and I can count the number of dry days on one foot.

So in short, after mucking about for about a year I finally booked a 4x4 Yorkshire Explorer weekend with One Life Adventure.

What about Sailsbury plain?well in all the videos I have seen is looks like there was a lot of water there and I have not fitted my snorkel at the moment, so that was off. We will go though its a lot closer than Yorkshire.

What camping kit to take?

Now I have done a lot of camping mostly on motorcycles, travelling by that is not on, it’s not easy to pitch a tent on a motorcycle, but you get my drift I'm sure. So going camping in a Land Rover is unreal, I have never owned a vehicle with the load carrying capacity of Larry.

There were only two of us as well, therefore the roof rack was not needed, but because of the weather forecast “a lot of wind and -2c”, we decided to take a small ground tent, a Millet Avon 3 man tent was selected from our collection. Not the big pop up tent we normally weekend in, these just blow away in high winds. The Avon tent is really well built, has a porch so you can cook inside if needed. Although this can be dangerous to do. Why a small tent, simple they keep the heat in and have flexibility, handy in high winds, providing you get one with fibreglass poles that is. Remember this folks aluminum poles are for low temperature and weight not overall flexibility.

The bed was to be made from two 50mm thick medium density foam mats placed side by side, which make a perfect bed and is very warm. We also took some kiddies play mats to keep the floor porch warm and insulated. The mattress was topped with A double sleeping bag with two individual bags, you basically put one in the other and it super warm. All the bags cost less than £100 which is a dam sight cheaper than one decent three season bag which would typically set you back £200 for a good one. The disadvantage of this sleeping arrangement is a lot of room is needed to cart it about, no problem with Larry.

Other camping kit;

A single hob gas cooker

Radio for the football, cricket in the summer

Gobbling rods, or Spork

Kettle

Camping food

Water canister

Food

Pillows

All of our camping gear fitted in the boot, we also carried spare auxiliary belt, oil, water, wheel bearing and not a lot of tools, oops.

Lastly a CB Radio and magnetic mount 5/8th wave aerial, of yes there is your key to say "19 Rubber Duck!"

The trip to Garsdale Cumbria

We meet up in a campsite (that word campsite is interchangeable for field) in Garsdale in Cumbria, that’s 340 miles from my house. We also had to do a detour on route to drop of the kiddie to aunties for the weekend. So the total trip to the meeting place was 365 miles, so that’s 730 miles round trip without the off road part.

However, just two weeks before we headed of Larry developed a drive belt squeak which I had to fix, he also had bad starting in cold weather and the battery was jumping about a lot due to the battery holder not actually being in the car. I’ll blog some of these basic fixes later, but in short a couple of hours cured all the problems (new battery, the "300TDI penny fix" to fix the tensioner and new glow plugs) and we headed off the next day with a full tank of Diesel. Just to make it fun I pulled into the service station on route to fill up and the number plate fell off, see the pictures below. That was not the only thing that fell off that weekend either.

Our route up was M23 – M25 - M11 – A1 – A1M all the way to Yorkshire (via Boston Lincolnshire). As per usual there was traffic works on the M25, and the M11 was closed due to a lorry turning over, arse. So the 3.5 hour trip to Boston Lincs became 5.5 hours. With a further 3 hours to go to our overnight destination.

Anyway kiddy dropped off, quick comfort break and we went onto stay at the Days Inn at Wetherby that night. This is a new hotel; it was a comfortable crash overnight till the next day in the morning we grabbed two large coffee’s and Panini’s from Costa. Then the remaining 90 minute trip to Garsdale.

Now this trip gave me the perfect opportunity to measure the Miles Per Gallon (MPG) on my Discovery 1 Automatic…

I filled up just before leaving and when we got close and calculated 31mpg for the trip to a petrol station approx. 20 miles short of Garsdale. Whilst I took the opportunity to fill up Larry with Diesel before heading up hill and dales for the weekend, Rachel took the opportunity to fill up the fuel stations toilet with something equally smelly, probably due to the strong coffee.

One hour later and we arrived at the campsite. There were a number of vehicles there, two Land Cruiser Amazons, a Freelander, Disco 1 & 2, Defender 110 van and station wagon and a 110 pickup. Everyone who had camped that night looked cold, except for Paul.

Wild camping Garsdale

Apparently it was -7c that night so when we arrived everyone was sitting in their vehicles warming up. The weather was fantastic, crisp clear and cold and the drive down to the campsite was wonderful.

I must admit I’m not a fan of the North of England (past Watford for me), but I can now say its North of Watford and South of Skipton is what lacks a certain I don’t know what…

Yorkshire however is lovely; we passed through loads of small towns on the A684 which were out of a picture book. I must remember to go back in the summer for a longer look, if we ever have one again in the UK that is.

North Yorkshire Lanes, beautiful

Anyway after 30 minutes waiting for everyone to get together, we topped up our water carrier for the weekends tea and coffee. I pee’d up the wall (this is mandatory when camping) Then we were ready for the briefing.

Paul let us know that we would be heading off for approx. 6 hours driving that day, mainly on rough rock or limestone roads some of which would be challenging for the Freelander, one of which the Freelander would not be able to make. We would stop for two breaks and end up camping for the night.

The overall route planning for the two days was described by Paul as;

Garsdale - Hawes - Bainbridge - Reeth - Merick - Holgate - Fremington - Redmire - Leyburn - Middleham - Lofthouse - Pately Bridge

We checked our CB Radio’s and PBR’s and headed off to the 1^st lane.

The route on the 1^st day was quite easy except for a rock climb created by the forestry.

Also there was a great washout, both were great fun though. We did a couple of small river crossings and also some tarmac sections between off road sections. I must admit I was worried if Larry would be ok, because as I said earlier apart form a steering and diff guards I have done nothing to the car, it even had road bias tyres on it, these are Dueller HT 689’s.

Driving a washout

A couple of things I did notice thought the Discovery 2 did not like wet grass; I guess the traction control was having a fit because it kept sliding about, nothing to do with the driver. The thing which really stopped the Freelander was also, wet grass. Ok it was on a slope but the Freelander needed a tow?

Anyway Larry plodded on and the only time I needed to engage diff lock once on the stone steps.

I have put some pictures here of the day…

Day 1 camping

Ok, I can spot people who have not camped a lot from a mile off; we had a few with us. The guys in the Freelander negotiated a warm bed in a static van on their 2^nd night camping, can’t blame them really, it was getting cold and windy. There was the Defender which had a lot of kit on it. The D2 had a brand new tent which was being tried in anger for the 1^st time. All had booked breakfast in the farm house, except Paul us and a couple of others.

The people who obviously had camped before did exactly what we did, get your home up and running ASAP, get the cooker on and the kettle hot. We put our tent behind a wall with Larry to the left where to give us as much protection from the wind as possible, it was getting quite bad.

Wild camping in a Yorkshire farm

You will need to substitute kettle for Cote Du Rhone for us that night, we decided to have some red before bed. I think we were setup a whole 30-60 minutes before the new campers and we were eating our grub.

It was early, but the tent was warm, so we did not get out into the cold around the camp fire, it was getting windy and we decided to crash, so I put the radio on and snoozed.

Rachel stuffed her spare clothes at the end of her sleeping bag to ensure in the morning they were not damp a good idea if you’re not 6’ 1”. Mine however were in a bag.

The wind

There are only two types of wind in camping, natural wind and food powered. This night it was proper windy, the weather forecast of -2c and 50mph winds were for once bang on.

Now any hardened camper will tell you the very 1^st time you camp out in bad weather you think you are going to die or the tent is going to take of and fly away with you in it. The more experienced you get the less weather worries you as long as you have pinned the tent down right. I did actually pin our down before getting in it, 1^st time in ages, but just as well I did.

However, waking up a 1am with a tent pole smacking you in the face as the tent flexes a lot is not really funny, but I turned off the radio and went back to sleep. I guess it must have been 2-3am a whole 7 hours after I started to sleep that I heard movements in the campsite. It was some of our fellow travelers packing up or retrieving parts of their camping kit. I was very sympathetic to what they were going through, so I turned over and went back to sleep because there was little I could do for them, especially with no trousers on.

3:30am, various other noises.

5:00am a couple of cars started, I guess the occupants were warming up again, I went back to sleep again.

7:30am, of time to get up, I chucked on my trousers and coat and get out of the tent to see what had gone on. Rachel put on the kettle and started breakfast.

The night had apparently torn an awning part away from one vehicle. Also one of the roof tent kitchens had come lose and was packed and the occupants decided to pack the tent away and get in the car. Everyone else seemed cold, except Paul, Rachel and me. I guess next time everyone else will ensure they are kitted out appropriately. I don’t think it was the tents but probably clothing and sleeping kit and when you get cold it’s not easy to get warm.

This whole night had me thinking about the value of a roof tent v’s ground tent. We had setup very quickly, were warm, didn’t crap ourselves due to the wind, Paul a Disco and Amazon had a roof tent and no issues, the other roof tent was an issue. Also our ground tent packed up a lot quicker than the roof tents.

I think the real advantage of a roof tent is where you just need the room in the car, when you have less kit to carry a small tent in the boot it easy. One of the guys did make a comment to me about needing a roof tent for Africa, I did say that that would be hard one on a motorcycle when touring there, but the point seemed wasted.

Anyway, I might end up with a roof tent, but at 16-22x the price of a reasonable ground tent it’s going to be a hard sell at the moment.

So, was it fun, hell yea, have a look at some of the pictures!