Regular readers (both of them) could be forgiven for thinking the Land Rover has fallen from grace lately. Flicking back through previous blogs entries, it features very little.This is probably because, in true Landy fashion, it's just been getting on with the job in hand.
That said, over the past few weeks, months in fact, it's had a few little treats and add-ons to make the job in hand easier or more comfortable.
After the night time outing on Salisbury plain, when alongside Dave H's truck the 90 looked a little saggy, I set about replacing the rear springs to make it a bit more industrial. This process was surprisingly easy if a little hefty. It was simply a case of disconnecting the lower damper mounts, jack the body off the old springs, swap them with the new ones and lower the car down again. Same again for the fronts.
Now, in a strange twist of Land Rover simplicity, heavy duty front springs are rated the same as standard rear springs so overall only two new springs were required (for the rear) with the old rears going in to the front, and the old fronts going in the bin.
And although still young in Land Rover terms (at less than twenty years old) the new springs have spruced the car up a bit, albeit at the expense of a little ride comfort. The new springs are, frankly, rock hard. Good for loading carrying, as long as the load isn't someone with a slipped disk.
Other additions that have slipped under the road radar of late are, in no particular order, a ladder, security grills in the rear windows, a work light on the back, a power point for the all-important fridge, a water heater (of the type fitted in RAC vans) and the fitting of the winch that's been lurking at the back of the garage since the Defender took over from a Discovery two years ago.
All of these proved their worth during the recent Bank Holiday weekend with a trip to the Lake District. Previous trips like this, I've always felt the car could do with beefing up a bit, but this time at no stage did I think "I wish this was better".
On both the domestic and driving fronts the car is now really nicely set up, although "nice" isn't a particularly emotive word when used in connection with cars. But it's true. With the roof tent on top, the fridge fitted and the water heater.....errrr......heating, the Land Rover had become like a little compact campervan.
The plan for the weekend was to meet up with a clutch of other Land Rover people at Coniston Hall, and although less than 300 miles away, the journey took nearly seven hours thanks to those ubiquitous merchants of buffoonery, The Highways Agency, deciding the Thursday evening rush-hour leading in to a long weekend was the ideal time to polish the cats eyes on the M6, or something.
Just as it got dark I arrived at Coniston Hall Campsite, possibly the worst campsite in the world and one we moved on from after just two nights of a planned four. Lesson learnt here is never let someone else book your campsite, as an entire tented village sprawled over the untidy field as the weekend progressed. During the two evenings we were unlucky enough to stay here, gangs of marauding kids blew through the site like an irritating gust of wind, dogs wandered around unchecked and by the time we upped sticks and headed for the wilderness, the ground itself was totally hidden under a sea of nylon and canvas. The site owner was, predictably, not open to the idea of refunds, or fire safety, or rubbish disposal. Awful, just awful.
Dodgy campsites aside, once teamed up with AJ and Mrs AJ in their nicely prepped 110 Station Wagon, Toppa in his 110 Van, and James and Debs in their gloriously battered ex-military Series III, the weekend was just epic. After a damp start on the Saturday, the weather improved gradually until Monday arrived over Haweswater (where we'd parked up for the night) without a cloud in the sky.
The laning was a combination of old coach roads which are child's play for a Landy, through to a number of tricky rock-crawls that even with traction control and anti-stall proved "interesting". Although the 90 lost traction in places, the anti-stall has an eerie quality to it, where it simply will not stop with the vehicle bouncing over rocks and grappling with loose shale as it tries to make progress, seemingly ignorant to the fact that it's simply and quite literally digging itself a deeper hole.
Once we'd slipped away from the tribes of savages and marauding gangs of the Bartertown campsite, the weekend took on a whole new identity, with a true expedition feel since we opted to camp wild. This doesn't mean not washing or running naked round a camp fire. It means camping where ever one needs to, and making do with whatever provisions and supplies are already in the vehicle. This is one of the beauties of roof top tents - they have a minimal foot print, no larger in fact than the vehicle on which they're mounted so it's easier and less intrusive to "park" rather than "camp". I prefer this approach since it relies more on self-sufficiency, and although requiring a little more effort and planning, brings with it a handy disconnect from those who cannot cope without a TV or a microwave. Things like the fridge in the Land Rover catapult campsite life forward a little though, with fresh milk for brews, fresh ground coffee and a decadent smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel breakfast. A few luxuries and comforts needn't impact on the trip though, and this is the key - the modifications and add-ons that have been installed on the Landy of late mean it's possible to make the domestics fit the overall exped, not the other way around. The other big advantage is that once everyone else has headed for their crappy campsites or twee B&Bs, we were still out on the trail, needing none of the services offered by the towns and villages we overlooked from high in the hills. It really did feel like we had the place to ourselves.... 
