There are not many reasons to look forward to bad weather but one driving activity that becomes ten times more fun when its wet and muddy is 4×4 off roading!
There are various levels of extremity when it comes to driving a 4×4 vehicle and it mainly depends on the terrain you are driving on. Greenlaning is probably the lesser extreme, where you are mainly tackling flat fields or forest tracks where although the terrain is likely to be muddy, there are no steep slopes. A few friends of mine go all the time and on my first ride as a passenger it appeared that this was no easy style of driving.
What most people consider to be a true 4×4 challenge is being able to drive up, down and over terrain that almost defies the possible. On a recent trip to Oxfordshire I had a fantastic drive in a Land Rover Discovery (or ‘Disco’ as my Instructor nicknamed it) and I could not believe how easily it pulled me through the course. It was a pretty nervous start as there were slopes far exceeding 45 degrees and I found myself either facing nothing but blue sky or head down towards the mud. The Discovery just ate up the ground beneath me and after some great tips from the Instructor I soon gained the confidence in the Car and the gears and picked up the pace for the next few laps.
The 4×4 Experience certainly got me interested in trying to pick up a Jeep on the cheap (no pun intended) as it was far easier to get to grips with than I thought. Being lucky enough to try a few more of the 4×4 driving experiences on Trackdays.co.uk since I certainly feel I could now try greenlaning without the worry of possibly ending up stuck in middle of someone’s farmland in Essex and having to be embarrassingly pulled out by a Tractor…
