A wet weekend in a squelchy field in Shropshire may not sound like fun. But like so many aspects of aluminium car ownership a little hardship makes you truly appreciate the finer things in life.This weekend saw the LRUK Shrophire Treasure Hunt, an unofficial yet well organised and popular gathering.
After much swearing at the roof-tent and how it fits to the Defender, I headed over to Widget's place, then next morning we continued to Shropshire.
The traffic was pretty busy, coupled with some typical middle-lane hogging ineptness from those Daily Mail readers who were out in their mid-range Japanese hatchbacks, but eventually we made it to Ludlow and stopped at a local supermarket to stock up on provisions. I had no idea the supermarket scenes in the film Hot Fuzz were part-documentary, but after our shopping experience I'm starting to come round to the idea. It was all a bit....."rural" but all the better for it with a nice selection of produce and cake with a home-made edge to them.
We also used this stop as an RV with Airbrush in his 90, and Ben and Danny in a Lightweight, a curiously named Land Rover since it is actually heavier than it's Series counterpart. Those crazy Solihullians being mischievous again.
So on to the campsite.
We were among the first to arrive, and were soon set up.
So what next?.......Pub?
Yup, but what a let down. Continuing the Hot Fuzz theme the pub (that shall not be named for legal reasons) seemed to be devoid of any business sense. Bearing in mind this is mid July we're talking about (and therefore mid-monsoon season), with a huge campsite attached to the pub, you'd think they do massive home-cooked hearty feasts. But hell no, microwave lasagne, frozen peas and oven chips. The lighting in the lounge bar area was also far too harsh and needed tweaking down a few watts. Driving a Land Rover is a tiring business so what could be called "subdued" lighting is sometimes a good thing, allowing a day behind the wheel to gradually wear off without the intimidation of 60-watt energy saving light bulbs. In short, Ambiance is not a village in France. The real ale, "Cambrian Gold", was pretty good though but even that ran out, and not through us drinking too much of it, sadly.
But hey, the company made the evening, and we chatted with the various other aluminium car owners now in attendance about such things as Chevy Blazers, faded pop stars from the 1980s, and lesbians.
The conversation about Chevy Blazers gave rise to a dawn of previously unknown disappointment when, in describing a Blazer, mention was made of '80s stuntman and part time private investigator Colt Sievers otherwise known as The Fall Guy otherwise known as Lee Majors.
"Who's Lee Majors?" came the call from the more junior end of the Land Rover spectrum.
But anyway, we travelled some fine lanes during the hunt, and made a note to return to Shropshire soon without the pressure of a mobile quiz to contend with. The weather was typical Land Rover weather, bright sunshine with heavy downpours. Ideal.
All three Land Rovers that we used for the Hunt performed faultlessly, especially Ben's Lightweight which, although some thirty years senior to either Widget's or Airbrush's shiny 90s, epitomised the phrase "Always out numbered, never outgunned". It flew up the hills and being on leaf springs bounced happily over any obstruction in it's path.
With a little disappointment we had to curtail the Hunt to make the 5pm cut-off, with only some twenty out of 132 clues completed. But to our utter amazement and thus having not even considered an acceptance speech, we cleaned up on the hunt and walked off with three different trophies for various aspects of what was a superb weekend.
