13th April 2003

Five vehicles came on this club outing. James Holloway in his lifted Vitara followed me up to Ashbourne where we were to meet the others. Already there was Dave Wright in an SJ413, Daniel Swain in a Samurai and Jon Rowland with his SPOA enhanced SJ410. This would be the SPOAs virgin outing.

We started off by driving up to Tissington Ford for a little play in the water. Jon promptly "did-a-dave" and broke a transfer case mounting! (his second so far, see if we can get it up to 7 hehe!) After a quick fix with a plastic tie we were off to the first lane. it started off with a nice climb up a hill on a rocky track. This was an easy run to begin the day with.

Next we joined the next lane which was fairly rutted, caused by farm traffic. The ground was too dry and dusty to be too difficult. This lane would be a different story if it was sodden in a foot of water. Again the following lane after this was a similar story, too dry and bumpy to be testing.

We travelled to the next lane which was a good few miles long, this was rutted also, but we had no problems in traversing it. Stunning scenery accompanied this route accross barren farmland with hundreds of miles of traditional Derbyshire dry-stone-wall. All the stone was mined locally from the hundreds of small quarrys dotted around the area.

This lane was spoilt by a load of r*mblers (mostly old 'wimmin') who shouted things like "get out your car and walk" as we drove slowly past. Then there was this one batty tart who seemed to be madly swatting flies in an overly-acted gesture of wafting the dust from her face! Its your own stupid fault for sitting next to a dusty road to eat your dinner!

After this we stopped at a pub in Ashbourne for some (highly over-priced) food. James replaced Jons T/case mount.

After dinner leadership was delegated to Daniel who lead us for a time. we did some more lanes down extremely rocky roads, with some rather large boulders littered around. glad i had my diff guard!

We decided to attempt the Stanage Edge trail near Sheffield. This lane consists of a track made entirely of rocks which makes for very bumpy going! There was a cliff to one side and a sheer drop to the other, this wasnt a time to get things wrong! There were some large rocks which had to be driven round/over very carefully. This was helped by the zukes small size and easy manoeuvrability. we reached a section near the top where huge half-sunken boulders were blocking the track. Dave attempted it first and finished up rocking sideways on his rear diff! he was pushed free and after a couple more goes made it. Me and Jon decided we had too much respect for our zukes to risk damage and turned round.

I will definately be attempting this lane again though when we have some waffles with us and more time to build up the rocks. The other two in the group also got over this section.

We met up again at the other end of the lane where we found James fixing a rear brake drum which had jammed on. this turns out to have bust the bearing but the brake was freed and we all got home ok.