King of the Mountains

I spent a fair chunk of Saturday adding marker posts to a nearby unsurfaced right of way. I did this as part of a volunteer effort drawing its members from several groups, the posts and permission to install them being provided by the local County Council.

The posts are intended to point users of the right of way in the right direction, as there are tracks wandering all over the open moorland area in question. Only one of these tracks is the proper right of way, the rest are off limits to motor vehicles. 

There seem to be two sorts of illegal user. There are those who know that it’s illegal, couldn’t care less, and will quite possibly resort to aggressive behaviour if challenged. There is little that can be done to educate these morons beyond taking a few covert photos and reporting them to the Police, who take a very dim view of their antics and can seize vehicles belonging to repeat offenders. It isn’t "telling tales", these idiots are the reason for our lanes being shut.

The second and more common sort are those who are simply not aware that they are doing anything wrong. They believe that it’s ok to ride an unregistered quad there because "it’s public land", or that they can drive wherever they feel like because their mate told them so. Quite often, if approached with a firm but friendly word, they’ll listen and be educated. If they’d fallen in with a reputable club they would probably have done the right thing in the first place. But again, their ignorance risks closure of our lanes. They aren’t usually members of any group and don’t therefore see any of the guidelines published by the various organisations.

One of the greatest problems is how to educate these people. In my part of the world the local press are very anti-4x4, although I suspect that this has more to do with them enjoying stirring muck and selling papers. As a result, the chances of getting any articles into there are slim indeed. Broadcast media simply aren’t interested, especially as the problem involves some knowledge of rights of way law and needs a greater attention span than that of the average mayfly. It also involves rural areas, where we don’t have chain coffee shops and their 3G phone won’t work. Handing out leaflets may help, but the worry is that most of them will end up in a hedge somewhere and of course they only reach the people to whom they are handed.

Those of us in the sensible laning world will always do our best to get the message around and lead by example, but there’s nothing we can do about the lone wolf types who either don’t know or don’t care about the law. A good move might be to run guided laning trips and festivals in the same vein as the recent Heart of Wales Walking Festival, if we can face down the inevitable bobble-hatted nonsense-mongers. But again, the ignorant probably wouldn’t turn up.

Not that this would bother us, as we’d simply go laning. But it would be far better if we could educate just a few in the proper way of doing things.

The above gibberish is, allegedly, CB radio at its finest. However, in over a year of owning such a device I have yet to hear anyone I know using the slang.

I was born a bit too late for the great CB craze of the ’80s, so reading about it on the internet is a bit of a history lesson. I bought a radio in order to keep in contact with the rest of the group on off road excursions, and as we only go in small groups we can recognise each other by voice. We’ve never developed strange handles like Rubber Duck or Green Goblin simply because we don’t need them. Plus I’d have a hard time keeping a straight face while sending messages like "Rubber Duck, coming in your back door" which I believe means "I’m catching you up".

The general opinion seems to be that mobile phones have killed CB, along with cheap walkie-talkies using the PMR 446 standard. As the licence fee for CB was repealed a while ago, this leaves those of us adopting it in a very good position. We have an autonomous communications system with no call charges and the ability to make conference calls. We have plenty of free channels due to the fact that there are few other users on the air. Most importantly, while a mobile phone ceases to function in rural areas due to the lack of cells our radios can work quite happily. 

Plus we get to make innuendo about the 9ft whip or the big red Thunderpole. Can’t do that with a mobile phone…

I’ve been watching with interest the truckers attempting to march on Parliament in protest against the outrageous fuel prices we now have to pay. Good on them I say. About time some people in this country did stand together and showed a little backbone.

What it has brought to light is how supposedly "counter-terror" legislation can be manipulated to suit whatever government wants to use it against. For example, the convoy from West Wales will not be allowed to visit the Welsh Assembly and hand their petition over. Likewise, any attempts at an effective protest will be illegal, as counter-terror legislation seems to have been written with a view to enabling government to stifle dissenters using the legal system. A bit odd in what is supposedly a liberal democracy.

The situation would seem to be that, as ever, a London-centric government and media hasn’t the faintest idea of what life is like for the rest of the country. They may be noticing the increased cost of food and iWidgets due to haulage companies having to charge retailers more to cover fuel bills, but in their cosy little world of buses and a reliable tube system it really doesn’t matter that diesel has hit £1.32 a litre.

Try putting yourself in this position: You live in the middle of nowhere. The only things you can buy locally are food, medicine, DIY supplies, stamps, and for some reason spectacles. If you want anything electronic then you have a forty mile plus drive to the nearest large retailer or you have to take the risk of buying online and unseen. Buses are either non-existent or on a twice daily basis, so you have to arrive at your destination at some unearthly hour and wait around all day to get home. Trains were mostly cancelled by a certain Dr back in the 1960s, those remaining seem to have been designed by a sadistic dwarf as revenge on tall people. Neither form of public transport would respond well to your turning up at the station with a large flatscreen TV.

This would probably be a good point at which to give a round of applause to our local post office. They’re brilliant, and without them mail order would be a non-starter. Unfortunately many even more remote villages have had their local post office close, which is not helpful to put it mildly.

City dwellers will also have trouble grasping the concept of needing a larger engine. It’s not macho posturing. It’s a simple case of a rubber band not being up to the job. An 1100cc Corsa will not carry four people and a bootload of shopping up steep hills in comfort at a steady 60mph. You need a medium sized to large car with ample power. Power needs fuel. While the advent of 150bhp two litre turbodiesel engines that return 50mpg has been welcomed, they are not a huge amount of use to those who need to haul outsize loads. For that, you need a 4x4.

They are not fashion accessories or compensation for anything, despite what oh-so-cool and oh-so-sheltered media types may try to tell you. They’re a response to a world where you might well come around a corner to find half an earth bank on the road, and where due to the lack of van hire firms you will have to bring that new shower cubicle forty miles home from B&Q yourself. That vast majority will be diesel, around ten years old, and returning around 30mpg. It costs over £100 to fill up with diesel now locally, which works out at close to £20 for a return shopping trip. Meanwhile Londoners balk at the fact that the Circle Line is running a few minutes late. You really don’t know you’re born.

We’re probably due another news story about this, so I’m getting in early. GPS confusion.

By this I mean those "special" people who manage to get themselves onto a railway line, or wedged halfway down a narrow back road after blindly following the directions of the little box on their dashboard. When they get stuck or their car is turned into an interesting metal sculpture by a train they will invariably say "the satnav told me to do it" as an excuse.

I think what particularly gets to me is the fact that media outlets, on the whole, nod sympathetically. With the exception of a few commentators nobody says the obvious response that we all had drummed into us at school: "If (insert person/gadget here) told you to put your hand in a fire, would you do that too?"

In the case of the nitwit on a railway line, you do have to wonder how on earth they ended up there. This wasn’t a case of stalling or breaking down on a level crossing, they had actually turned onto the line and driven up it a short distance. Did the fact that they were now bumping over sleepers on gravel not register? If they don’t notice something that obvious their ability to notice something like a phone-wielding idiot wandering aimlessly in front of them has to be questioned. Poor observation is the cause of a huge number of accidents, regardless of what the camera apologists will tell you.

It seems that a satnav reaches right into the hindbrain and flips a little switch. Armed forces the world over spend some time flipping this switch in their troops during basic training. In their case, unquestioning obedience is a safer bet than a division deciding to attack the enemy by whatever method they’ve just thought of. In the case of civilian satnav users, the unquestioning obedience switch can be lethal. Obeying these things sheep-like without using your own eyes and judgement will eventually lead to you becoming one of the plonkers who ended up bogged down in a field.

I think it says something depressing about the state of the world that people are now obeying the instructions of small plastic boxes without thought or question. Speaking as someone who is used to proper digital maps I find the average satnav annoying. It just doesn’t have the detail I want.

For that reason, I came up with a solution. It involves an old laptop living in the boot with a GPS receiver and a touch screen on the dashboard. It not only provides a 1:50k OS map display centred on my current location, it will also play music and browse the web if I find a WiFi hotspot. The best part? It cost less than a conventional satnav and I don’t have an irritating voice telling me to "turn right" while the lights are red… 

I spent Sunday driving a couple of interesting byways, first off the world famous Strata Florida. This lane has a bit of a fierce reputation and I would certainly stress that you don’t do it alone or in a vehicle that you are worried about minor damage to. On my first attempt I ended up with a strange whining noise from an idler bearing which had taken offence to a dunking, after the second I had a concave steering guard. Another of our party managed to leave his front numberplate behind in one of the deeper fords, quite possibly the one that did for my bearing. This was not a case of doing silly things, just occupational hazards of driving off tarmac.

Yet despite this treatment, both cars were happy cruising at a steady 60-ish on the way home. Which I feel says a lot for how strong these vehicles are. Your chances of doing serious damage to the vehicle are slim at most.

As for terrain damage, well, the vast majority of Strata is solid rock. You would need dynamite to do any damage at all to that route. There is more risk of the landscape damaging you than there is of you damaging the landscape, whatever hysterical bobble-hatted individuals might tell you. In the whole day we saw a grand total of two other vehicles to our three, which I feel destroys the claims about hordes of vehicles. Two unconnected groups of three or fewer does not constitute a horde.

At this point you may be wondering what the attraction is. While I will be in danger of resembling the old Fast Show sketch I will do my level best to explain.

It’s the feeling you get that you’ve done things very few others get to do. Looking at a map and realising that there’s no other human life for miles around, driving up things that would cause the average person to scream and hide. A particular favourite of mine on another byway has you turn left and drive up a near-vertical rockface. Where else would you get to do that? The feeling when you hit the tarmac at the end of the day and have to re-adapt to sharing the road with assorted numpties has to be experienced to be believed. Knowing that you’ve just come from a place where they will never go and that you’ll be going back in a few weeks. 

Despite the best efforts of the bobble-hatted and red-socked hordes, there are still a few untarmaced rights of way around that you can drive. Known as Byways Open to All Traffic in the mainstream, barring closures you can drive them legally.

Only the truly daft would try going out on unfamiliar routes solo. So you go with friends. Up to four vehicles is the advisory given by several organisations as longer convoys tend to give the wrong impression. You’ll spend most of the day ambling up and down near-vertical hillsides with these people, so you’ll get pretty close.

The appeal, for those who’ve never tried it, is probably a mix of the challenge and the social side. Handling awkward terrain without damaging the route or your vehicle and ending up with some good war stories. Quite often these will be of the time your mate managed to do a nose-stand on a section that you went straight across.

It’s a bit like the rose-tinted view of childhood in the 1950s really. You spend all day out playing in the hills with your friends and return tired, muddy, and somewhat hungry as despite having packed food you failed completely to eat any of it. It’s probably the most fun you’ll ever have with clothing attached and it means you get to talk in strange slang of axle-twisters, waffles and Jate rings.

All you need is a vehicle, a tow rope, and some friends with another suitable vehicle. What’re you waiting for? 

If you’ve watched any rallying, you’ll know what to expect. Smallish saloon cars and hatchbacks treating the laws of physics as a minor nuisance. But it wasn’t always that way.

In the early 1970s Lancia began working on a purpose-built rally car, rather than starting from a roadgoing vehicle. After much development work the Stratos HF prototype appeared in 1971.

To look at one, you wouldn’t think it a rally car. It has a mid-mounted V6 engine from a Ferrari, only two seats, a gigantic wrap-around windscreen and the wedge shape popularised by first-generation supercars like the Lamborghini Countach. But look a little closer and it begins to make sense.

The wheelbase is far shorter, making the car more nervous at speed than would be normally be desirable. But in the hands of a skilled racer this could be translated into perfect drifts and very precise cornering. Despite the sleek appearance the car was more than solid enough to handle the rough gravel and mud of the average rally stage. It has a wide track, giving better grip and more resistance to roll.

The Group 4 competition version of the Stratos made its debut in 1974, after the requisite number of road-going versions had been built to satisfy the regulations.  Fewer than five hundred would be built in all. Earlier prototypes had been extensively tested in Group 5, where regulations did not require a minimum number of road cars be constructed.

The victories mounted. The 1974, 1975 and 1976 championship wins were unfortunately followed by a Fiat ruling that the firms rally effort would be concentrated on the Fiat 131 Abarth, but it didn’t end there. In private hands the Stratos raced on, winning the 1979 Monte Carlo Rally outright and winning international-level events into 1981. A new generation of enthusiasts was created when the car appeared in various games, starting with Sega Rally and including the Gran Turismo franchise. There are even kits available to build a full size replica. Despite the best efforts of Fiat it just won’t die!

Your truck no longer has all the trim it left the factory with.

You cut some or all of the missing trim off in order to fit protective plates, bars, or sliders.

Other people know where you’ve met your new friends by the fact that you almost immediately start discussing how to use cooking oil as fuel.

Snow provokes a similar reaction from you to that of the average five year old.

You find yourself doing the weekly shopping in something equipped to cross the Sahara because you can’t be bothered to take all the gear off.

Your most useful tools are a can of Plusgas and a big set of spanners.

The thing you desire at the moment is made of steel plate and costs around £300.

Before trying to go into a multi storey car park, you first have to unbolt the two metre long aerial from your roof.

Your car washing routine consists of thoroughly jetwashing the underside then giving the bodywork a brief pass with a hose.

After doing this, your driveway could sustain a crop of vegetables.

The paint on your roof is scratched.

You have got out of bed at five AM in order to drive around a frozen mountainside.

You then repeated this the next day.

You wonder why anyone would buy a car that can’t put a wheel up on a tree stump and keep the remaining three wheels in contact with the ground.

You find yourself relishing the chance to go to cities, as you find scaring urban 4x4s hugely amusing.

You have watched and laughed at videos of clueless Hummer drivers breaking their vehicles.

You regard “Not suitable for motor vehicles” as a challenge.

Likewise news reports along the lines of “Town cut off by snow”.

Your “satnav” is a laptop PC running mapping software.

As Garmin seem less than enthusiastic about offering a USB charge/data cable for the otherwise excellent Foretrex 201, I decided to do something about this. Note that this device will probably void your guarantee and I take no responsibility for any adverse effects. It worked for me however!

Firstly, obtain your parts. A cheap USB A-B device cable and a 0.7mm/2.5mm DC power plug (I bought mine from Maplin - their code L43AY). Cut the "B" end off the USB lead and strip about 1cm of the outer insulation from the now bare wire. You’ll find four wires wrapped in foil and wire shielding.

Pull the shielding away and separate the wires. Two of these are 5v power, the other two are for data transfer. Cut the data wires and shielding away, then bare the ends of the live and neutral wires. In my cable these followed conventional wiring colours with the live being red and the neutral black. If in doubt, check with a multimeter. Pinouts for USB plugs can be found in many places on the internet.

Before you go any further, dismantle the new plug and slide the housing over the cable. Make absolutely sure that this has been done before soldering the new plug in place, as failure to do so can lead to scorched fingers, swearing, and more work than you really need to do.

The Garmin charging cradle is wired so that the centre contact of the plug is the live, and the barrel neutral. Solder the wires in place - red to the terminal in the centre, black to the terminal at the edge. Then bend the cable grip "horns" to clamp the wires in place. Note that they won’t go around the outer insulation! After checking that there is no chance of a short circuit, screw the housing onto the plug and give it a test.

All done. You can now leave that bulky mains adaptor at home and charge your GPS from your laptop (admittedly you will need the laptop power supply, but you still have one less adaptor to lug about). This should also work with those devices that plug into a car cigar lighter socket and provide a USB socket for charging MP3 players.

About a year ago I watched an episode of anime on a friend’s computer. Now, most anime has giant fighting robots. Initial D is something else entirely: For a start, it’s about streetracing.

In Britain this would raise thoughts of idiotic youths with oversized stereo systems doing handbrake turns in the local supermarket car park. Not so in Japan. Touge, or mountain passes, are the racetracks and racing is conducted at a semi-professional level. Obnoxiously loud stereos are not found, only modifications that improve performance. Likewise dangerous driving is frowned upon. These are not your local Novaboys, they have more in common with a rally team. Local areas have their own race team, which competes with others for prestige.

The story begins with Ryosuke Takahashi, a touge racer who realises that he does not have much time left before the adult world begins to impinge on his racing. He decides to start a new team, Project D, with the aim of beating every other team in Japan. He recruits his younger brother Keisuke and an uncannily talented young man by the name of Takumi Fujiwara as drivers, and in the best anime fashion the victories begin to pile up. Every race sees Takumi take on a far more powerful opponent and beat them by sheer skill with his 1986 Toyota Corolla (AE86, in racer lingo). Takumi’s skills improve with every race, as he learns from his opponents. Later in the series, his father buys a Subaru Impreza. Takumi uses this alternately with his AE86 to deliver tofu for the family business, effectively causing him to chase his Impreza times with the AE86 and develop his skills further.

So what’s the appeal, I hear you ask? Well, the idea of being faster in an old car than far newer models due to skill is very pleasant for those of us who through choice are still driving an 11 year old Land Rover (and before anyone says it’s not touge-ready, I’ll suggest you see it in action first…). The idea of developing your fast road abilities in the wilder parts of the country is also one I feel a natural affinity to, given that the vast majority of my miles are covered in terrain where the Project D crew would feel at home. Certainly I maintain that anyone who learned their car control in a Welsh winter will be a formidable opponent in all weather conditions, and very much enjoy showing clueless people in new Range Rovers precisely what a Series 1 Discovery is capable of.