Popped over to my Dad’s this week. He had cooked an excellent curry and Annie, his wife and I saw off a bottle of Dolcetta picked up recently in Comboland. As it was a lovely evening I took the 1948 Land Rover minus roof. Always a thrill to drive. It’s so dangerous, lacking seat belts and with doors that fly open round bends. Leaving their house in Pitsford at around midnight I felt it might be prudent to take the back roads home, via the lovely villages of Tur Langton, Carlton Curlieu and Burton Overy. There is no thrill quite like driving a sixty year old Land Rover on a moonless night down narrow country lanes. Pathetic lights, appalling handling, freezing cold and wishing I had worn more layers. I took the picture on my phone, having left the Canon at home, but it represents about the right view. The gloom pierced by a mixture of original ‘Butler’ headlights, as fitted to tractors of the day and a Lucas spotlight from the fifties. Motoring does not get better than this.
12 comments:
This is remarkable photograph. At first I wondered what a bronze age helmet was doing on your blog. Like that optical illusion drawing where you're either looking at a candle stick or two people's profiles. Am I making any sense?
Yes Peter. Perfect sense. I was fooled at my Dad's by various bits of paper that I was asked to arrange to depict two riders on horses. I'm hopeless at that sort of thing and ended up ripping up the paper. It's easy then. By the way. The picture was taken on that seldom used road from north of Tur Langton that cuts through a rifle range and comes out near Carlton Curlieu. Deserted. Brilliant.
I think it looks like a man with a very deep top lip. His eye's the light, the bumper's his open mouth. Straight from an obscure Channel 4 late-night Polish cartoon. Brilliant photo; can smell the hedgerows and hear the whine of heavily treaded tyres on tarmac.
I know the road very well indeed Toby. At the Shangton end there's a gas pipeline monitoring thingy behind a wire fence. In front of it is a pull-in for the gasman's van. It was a very useful spot in my more youthful days for, ahem, indulging in covert pleasures of one sort or another. During daylight hours it was not unusual to come across a red flag flying to warn of stray Lee Enfield bullets richocheting off farm machinery and a spotty private asleep in a sentry box.
When I first read this, being jet-lagged, I at first thought it said that your Dad had cooked an excellent curry and Annie....a Leeds chef was convicted of that this week!
Lovely post! There's nothing quite like driving an old vehicle after dark when it's getting chilly...they always seem to run smoother and faster...someone told me why this should be (water or summat) but I forget. The added frisson of glowing lamps and lack of brakes all adds to the adventure. It's a beautiful evening...might just nip out on the 'bike.
Jon, that autumn night sweet running phenomenon in full: cold air increases the density of charge (i.e. more air in a given volume), giving a bigger bang. The Fibonaccimobile was out late a few nights ago and, this being our first autumn together, I found the extra oomph most endearing.
This is why you need a bigger intercooler on a diesel engine of the Fibonaccimobile. Cools the air. greater density, bigger bang. Free power. To coin the now famous Diplomat line - More free power! My Bikes been SORN since the end of September when both Tax and MOT ran out. Gutted to have missed all this sunshine.
Thank you chaps, much appreciated...where else can you receive such information without being nerdily lectured? By the by, if anyone's around and a propos of nothing at all, in the South of England on Saturday there's a great meeting at Goodwood...virtually free admission too!
It's a face I tell you, a cartoon face! We're looking at his left profile, his bottom lip's drooping and his weird glowing eye is staring out into the dark.
Could just be me of course.
I think it's just you Fred. Go and lie down in a darkened room.
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