AGE BEFORE BEAUTY

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Courier Countryside Column  Friday April 12 2013 

Courier headline (why  do they insist  on italicising one word?):

1970 class leaves the rest  standing

Did I mention it poured throughout the afternoon when we were laying hedges in the Community Orchard?  Probably not – rain’s hardly news now.  But it meant the vehicles bringing the Hedgers and their equipment across the fields in the morning had somehow to get out at the end of the day.

The Discovery was the first to get stuck in the mud before it had even slithered through the first gate. Then their Mitsubishi Shogun with its trailer got bogged down.  Only my ancient 1970 Land Rover seemed able to cope with the conditions. It struggled a bit when we attached the trailer but got to the road eventually.  The Disco stayed up to its hubs in slime and, even without its trailer, the Shogun was clearly going nowhere.  Eventually the Orchard’s even more venerable Ford tractor was pressed into service and towed the modern cars out.

I don’t want this this to become a paean to petrol heads, but it’s worth observing just how much better off-road a 43 year old Land Rover was than a brand new one - or even a Japanese 4x4 come to that.

My long-wheelbase Series IIa, named Fergie, is a thoroughly disreputable vehicle.  He’s battered and bruised, His blue paint has quite worn through in places. He’s habitually covered in mud.  His seats are torn, his interior a disgrace and some years ago I converted him to a pick-up by taking off the Safari top and fabricating a canvas tilt over the driver’s cab.  Mrs B refuses to travel in him and even Myrtle shows some reluctance. But this eccentric vehicle is just perfect for orchard work.  Tools are kept in a tin trunk bolted to the back. The rest of the rear is filled with logs and stakes and tree ties and sheep protection. In the twenty years I’ve had him he’s broken down just once … when he overheated on the Cranbrook by-pass after I’d massively overloaded him with loft flooring.

He’s the living embodiment of the claim that 75% of all ‘series’ Land Rovers are still on the road today, and makes a mockery of the current advertising campaign suggesting the ugly Range Rover Coupe evolved from a 1947 Series I!

I’m sure I heard Fergie gently guffaw when we sailed past that modern Discovery stuck fast in the mud!