Driving down a single track lane, atmidnight, in the dark, through the centre of a field full of sheep, who are probably quite annoyed (if sheep get annoyed) at being woken up, made me think that perhaps we should have skipped the restaurant in Manchester and set off a bit sooner.

After five minutes and many woken sheep later we arrived at a campsite apparently lacking any signs of life but, promisingly through the dark we could see scattered 4x4’s.  After a quick greeting from Paul, the expedition leader, we found what looked to be the flattest patch of land in a field with a distinct lack of flat land!

There was just enough time for a quick beer round the camp fire with the few remaining off roaders before we retired to our first of many nights sleeping in the back the Land Rover.  A couple of hours after bedding down for the night the rain started, sometime later during the night, as we gradually slid towards the front of the car, I also realised that even the flattest bit of land we could find in the field wasn’t actually very flat at all.

A fairly restful nights sleep saw us wake to continued rain, rain which hardly let up for the whole days driving.  This first day of driving was great fun and we passed through rivers, over rocks and up and down some pretty steep slopes without incident.  We were both really impressed of what ours and everyone else’s cars were capable of doing and admittedly some of the things we did do, I would never have attempted had I not just seen several other cars do it!

That night was spent wild camping in what had to be one of the bleakest locations possible, half way up a hill with no tree cover or shelter of any kind.  We were welcomed to our camp site by gale force winds and driving rain, lovely. 

Sitting in the car watching everyone else battle in the wind and rain in an attempt to put up their tents and roof tents the barbeque we had brought maybe didn’t seem like the best idea, driving back down the mountain to the pub on the other hand, did.  We managed to stay strong and, like real men, hid in the car until the worst of the rain stopped, opened a couple of beers and had a barbeque in the rain!

The second days driving was similar to first, no major catastrophes and the car (including all the DIY modifications) help up well.  Despite the British summer weather doing its best to ruin things, the weekend went as well as we had hoped, we learnt lots, managed to steel a couple of good ideas fromother vehicles and met a lot of nice people

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Now to try and tackle the huge list of jobs that still need to be done in the next three weeks before we leave!

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