23rd December 2003

I had organised a Christmas laning trip on Christmas Eve, eve. (the 23rd, ok!) The weather was most definately not on our side. On the photo below you can see; Greg's yellow SJ, my Samurai, Andy Whalley's Jimny and Andy Bales' Vitara. Not shown is late arrival, Paul Hopkins.

Well, we met up at 7pm, just in time for the rain to start.

The first lane is a RUPP near to Baslow, which drops down through a ford, then up a rocky section. Someone in a yellow SJ (no names) nearly killed his clutch by tackling this in 2wd and slipping the clutch all the way up! DOH!

We let the clutch cool while Paul got stuck on his (smaller than standard) road tyres. Andy pulls him backwards and this time he makes it through.

We head for a lane going out of Stoney Middleton, but find that the council have resurfaced it! It is now a compacted gravel track which you could get a mini up. Certainly not as much fun as the boulder-strewn track of before.

After this we head off and do Burbage Moor, before going on to Stannage Edge; Andy watches as I ascend it in the pitch black.

from here we drive to Chapplegate, but when we get there the weather has really closed in. There is a very strong wind, heavy rain and its also getting very foggy. We decide not to do this lane as driving up an exposed hillside in those conditions is not very sensible! We go straight to Roych Clough which made a nice end to the trip.