Army adventures: part 1

Years ago when hubs bought his first Landrover, he got an invitation for a one-day-off-the-road-driving-course. He came back with lots of great stories, about being able to touch the grass through the open window when the car was parked sideways on a steep slope, driving through water, driving up steep hills and off them again. He did have a great day.

Then I bought my Landrover, Bob, and I too got an invitation for such a course. Since I knew it would be a great day, not to be missed, I called a friend and asked if she wanted to join me on a fun day out. And so we went into the woods to learn how to drive up a slope. Landrover have a special truck, that unfolds into what looks like a Canadian wooden lodge, and acts as a bar/restaurant. They also employ some good looking rugged men to teach you how to drive through the wilderness in cars owned by Landrover, so your own car will not get dirty and/or dented. Friend and I had a great day. And indeed, we touched grass through the open window of a Range Rover while parked sideways on an extremely steep slope. All very exciting. What made it even more exciting, friend needs glasses to drive a car and see where she’s going, but because of the handsome Landrover guys she didn’t want to spoil her good looks by hiding them behind those glasses, which meant that half of the time she was driving the car in braille-mode. Not a clue where she was going. Sometimes the driving-instructor would scream things like: “What the…!?! Where are you… ?!?”, but she kept her cool and didn’t mention her blindness. And I was just trying not to wet my pants from the combination of fear and laughter.

Of course, with the Netherlands being asphalted over almost entirely, after that one day I’ve never driven a car through any wilderness, apart from our garden, again.

But, last Sunday we had the opportunity to join a whole bunch of 4x4 car enthusiasts and drive our Bob through army-training terrain. Where usually tanks and soldiers play war, we could freely drive up and down especially constructed hills and through water, without the risk of being shot at.

And we loved it. We did start very carefully, saying that we wanted to keep Bob clean, but secretly just not having a clue how to keep Bob alive in the more challenging parts of the terrain. These guys do this more often…

And as always ‘bachelor's wives and maiden's children are well trained’ or as we say in the Netherlands: ‘de beste stuurlui staan aan wal’ (the best helmsmen are on shore).

The fanclub:

We declined an offer of one of the guys there to drive Bob for us through this mud pit, because I’d just heard him jokingly say that he’d already lost 4 cars in this pool. So, with Bob still clean and alive, we drove further into the woods, looking for two hills known by the army as ‘Vanessa’ (after a Dutch ‘singer’ who has two strong points and singing isn’t one of them).
Since I was navigating, it didn’t take us long to find Vanessa. It could have taken even less time, but hubs has a mind of his own and didn’t always follow my instructions *sigh*.

Vanessa was very popular:

(not hubs and not Bob either)

This looked like fun and also doable, so hubs drove Bob up a smaller hill and through this ditch a couple of times and then I got into the car too to take some shots while we were driving up…

…and down…

This is Bob:

This is one of my favourite photos. Aww…   

And then we saw a couple of guys we know from the Landrover dealer and also a friend of us, and from then on everything went pretty much downhill for Bob’s cleanliness.

To be continued…