Apart from she who must be obeyed having a cold and deciding not to go, the day started well.

Some form of divine inspiration told me that Mark Summerbee equalled water so out with the WD40 and a spray under the bonnet. Missing wading plug …. never mind, we won’t get too wet anyway! My friend, another Mark, arrived early without his V8 Series III that had a snapped spring, so I had a co-pilot for the day.

This was our first greenlaning outing in about 3 years and our first with a club, so we were eager to go; it would make a nice change from Devils Pit. We packed up all the pieces of essential off-road equipment – ropes, shackles, tools, maps, 6-year-old son, etc. With the prospect of deep water the latter piece of equipment was the most important; you can tie a rope to the kids, throw them in the water, if the water goes over their heads then it’s too deep to drive!

The group assembled at Baldock at 10:00, all that is, except for the leader. A yellow beast soon arrived (is this the LaLa car I'd read about before?) (Sorry Kevin it isn't the Lala car which is Mark's Rangie, I don't think this one's been named yet but up till recently it was green! - Ed). Off we went, seven cars in convoy – destination, the unexplored wilderness of East Herts and Essex.

The morning was uneventful and soon had Ken, my son, demanding mud, water, 1:1 hills and more mud – why are kids always so suicidal? We did about seven lanes of varying length before descending on an unsuspecting hostelry for lunchtime watering. Lunch was a light meal except for Paul who ordered a shoulder of lamb and was served with something out of Jurassic Park. Suitably refreshed we left for the afternoon drive but not before we overheard Mark talking about the route which was to consist of lots of water crossings.

Excellent! - We thought - and Mark (2) was pouring over the maps trying to work out where we were.

We headed off for what looked like a riverbed, which still had some interesting remains of water. More pouring over the map but we couldn’t find the place and finally decided we were looking on the wrong map! Following that section we ended up at a fantastic ford about 50 yards long.

We were fourth in the convoy and watched the first three Landies swim across with no problems. Easy I thought! Half way through the Rangie started spluttering and then died. It restarted easily and would tick-over but each time I asked for power it just cut out. Water was coming under the doors quickly and was soon 6 inches deep in the footwells. Excellent! Mark clambered out of the passenger window and climbed onto the bonnet, fished around the front for the pre-fixed towing bridle and awaited a tow from any passing AA van. The only yellow vehicle to come to our rescue was none other than Mark S. Soon the submersible was on dry land with water pouring out of its open doors. It started first time and ejected the odd fish from the exhaust - another quick spray of WD40 and we were running on 7 out of 8.

We spluttered off to a very interesting lane, which was designed to see how far over a Land Rover can lean and by the end of that the poor old Rangie was down to 6 cylinders. A quick rummage under the bonnet and all was back to normal. We concluded that the loose lead that fitted into the round plastic thing with 8 other leads on top of the engine was something to do with it. Clever eh?

The convoy ended the day just south of Stevenage through a forest section. Vid Matimong in his blue D90 behind us, and bringing up the rear, was a bit over enthusiastic through the mud and suffered a clogged air filter and was billowing blue smoke.

A great time was had by all, not least by Vanessa Ralphs who had her offroad driving baptism and many, many thanks are due to Mark for organising the day!

The following day I received an email from Newsletter Mistress Hayley who was cracking the whip! <perk> leather!! As penance for being the only one to get stuck I was to write this report! Yikes!! (So, now you've all been warned and yes my whips are of varying length but it's my lunge whip that makes a nice cracking sound - Ed) I apologise to those who went on Sunday for waffling on. To those who didn’t go I make no apology for boring you – just go next time and you wont have to read my reports again!!