Arguably, the most important “common sense” decision was the choice of vehicle to take onto the course, and I would probably loudly argue none of them!
However, not as muddy as it might have been considering the weather we’ve had, but rutted, broken up, and rough enough to think twice about each part of the track, the three normal road vehicles, as it turned out, were reasonably capable “off road”, and the Green Flag technicians, on hand to perform muddy rescues, report that they were not actually needed, but leapt into action, just for show…
(See http://blog.greenflag.com/2018/my-mud-motors-chris-hughes/ for the inside story.)
Throughout the day a more challenging demonstration route was tackled by ‘real’ off-road drivers, in ‘real’ off-road vehicles, and everyone was given the chance to be a passenger with them. For anyone fooled by the apparent capabilities of the road cars, this route proved that, sometimes, you need a little more!
Another distraction to keep the brain active was a specially adapted Freelander. The adaptation in this case not to make things better but considerably more confusing… The steering was reversed!
Now, I’m sure that there are many motorists who struggle with knowing their left from right, and I imagine a few navigators have been frustrated by their instructions being misinterpreted, but this was certainly not designed to fix that problem.
From conversation, it appears that those of us who put ourselves through this challenge each fell into one of two groups… Group A which found it the most natural thing in the world, and Group B who thought the laws of physics had imploded. Either way, it was a curious experiment… and I’ll let you decide which group Mike falls into…:
