23/24th August 2003
People present - (Fronty) Pete Dale, Duncan Jones - (Fun Bus) Sarah Cooper, Shelley Brook, 3 Mini Coopers
It all started when Pete's caving lamp decided that it had had enough. No light, no caving. Nice day want to do something else Dunc? Erm like what? oh lets go off roading!
So off they went, Pete,Dunc and Petes Frontera up, up and away into the hills beyond Dentdale, leaving me, Shelley and assorted children to do our our own thing like visit Glasson Dock. Just as we were leaving Glasson dock to go back to Shelleys for something to eat we get a phone call from Pete. Erm we're stuck! he says.
"Oh yeah, like hell you are !" I reply
"I am I am!"
"You're not you're not!"
And so it went on till one of us hung up on the other (cant remember which of us got there first!) anyway we really didnt believe that they were stuck so off we went for some tea.
Got back to Shelley and Petes got some tea dished out onto plates, knife and fork in hand, when we got another phone call from Pete.
"We're stuck we're stuck!"
"You're not you're not ! stop winding us up! good bye!" I growled (keeping a woman from her tea just ain't a good idea mate)
Anyway after much scratching of heads at our end we finally realised that perhaps they were not winding us up for once and that they may really BE stuck so we piled the kids in the back of the Landrover, took plenty of emergency rations and a map and set off into deepest darkest dentdale to rescue the two stuck cavemen.
Two hours later we managed to find them 6 miles or more from where Pete's Fronty was ( how did you put it the other day Pete?) " detained "
"Had a nice long walk Boys?" we asked sweetly " well the exercise will have done you good!" ( well if my memory serves me correctly somewhere on the BRCC website it does say something about organising nice long walks in the yorkshire dales...bit mean of you not to invite anyone else, eh??!)
"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" came the reply.
So we all piled back into the landy and went back to Shelley and Petes.
Sunday dawned a nice day just the weather for having a nice relaxing drive into erm Dentdale. Sarah suddenly started suffering quite badly from deja vu. havent i been down this road before boys??
Where did you say you got your car stuck Pete? "ITS NOT STUCK!" he said. It is it is it is! I said. NOOOOOO its not! he said.
Anyway much bickering and wisecracking later we found the " nice smooth tarmacked road" that he had ventured up not 24hrs earlier.
"Erm Pete wheres the road gone???!!!!"
"Its not a road its a green lane can't you see!!" he replied.
Noooooo its not I can't get my landrover up there I cant I cant I cant I cant.
Anyway I suddenly remembered that my landrover was designed to go off roading, had diff lock, 4 wheel drive and was built like a tank and that the worst that could happen would probably be chipping my nail varnish and now was probably a good time to put into action my age old motto, anything you can do i can do better! ( cough splutter I really should stop saying that cos i dont believe it for a minute!)
So off we went........ Bumpty bumpty bump well i am used to off roading only when I got to Tesco's and so it took a bit of getting used to. Suddenly i was being deafend by shouts of "SLOW DOWN!" well I wasnt going THAT fast was I? I mean there are no speed limits on green lanes are there??!! ;) eh? eh? (why had everyone gone green around the gills and how come Shelley got out to walk all of a sudden??!!)
Anyway after the most terrifying 3.6 mile drive of my life (and two occasions when i had begun to wonder if we were gonna manage to get the Landrover anywhere near the frontera due to it almost tippling over in a rut or two well I know that in theory you can get it to 45 degrees and it will remain upright but i wasnt sure that i really wanted to try that theory out 3.5 miles in the middle of nowhere in case it was all lies!)
At last we saw the top of the Frontera.. Nice bit of parking mate.
So we got out to stretch our legs whilst Pete attempted to dig himself out..
"Mud pies" thought the kids.
"Oh god" thought the girls.
A puddle to jump in thought Dunc.
And so it went on the Kids ended up caked up in mud from head to foot, the frontera was still stuck sorry, no, not stuck ,"detained" so we had to bring in the woman with the tank! Woman with a tank?? oh me you mean arghhhhh!
I cant drive over there I quivered, suddenly remembering i was a girl and girls dont do off roading
Do you want me to do it? said Pete. NOoooooooooooo! I replied ( erm well not till i have tried to and failed anyway I secretly thought but didnt say trying to appear to be brave!)
So over we went across the most hideous piece of ground in the entire world, at one point I thought we were gonna have a 2 car pile up in the middle of Dentdale cos the landrover was mysteriously leaning in the general direction of the Fronty. But we managed, I got it across the muddy part and Pete sorted the tow rope out (I am a girl i know nothing about tow ropes and have no desire to alter that fact!) and i was absolutely determined that my nail varnish wasnt gonna get chipped ;)
1-2-3 out Fronty comes.!
Yesssssssssss! sorted!!!! Whoppppppeeeeeeeeee!
Next problem doing a 99 point turn in a small space with a landrover. But hey we managed that too. with a lot of shouting " put your wheels here and put your wheels there and get out of my way or i will run you over Pete!"
Next issue getting back over the top of the hideous bit of mud that Pete "parked" in in the first place without either of us getting stuck.. After you Pete......!
Off he went Oh my God do I have to go over there? Well I went white as a sheet and started shaking. I cant do that, noooooo I cant I cant i can't I cant I thought. I had visions of falling down the whole where Fronty had been stuck.
Anyway after a lot of deliberation about handing the landrover keys to pete and telling him to do it for me (boy did I come close to handing over them keys!) my stubborn streak kicked in and I jumped back in the Landrover, took a deep breath and drove across the top of the nasty bit.. ..Yes!!!!!! I thought.
Oh nooooooooo! I thought when I realised that I couldnt move, I was stuck (embarassingly I'll admit) on not a nasty muddy bit but (get this) on some plain boring grass! Landy gets stuck on grass and poor little fronty gets to pull big landy out..... OH no I ain't gonna ever hear the end of this am I? (especially not if this makes it onto the BRCC website! arghh!)
Anyway will more pulling and tugging and twanging of tow ropes we got me unstuck, we managed a quite uneventful drive back down the green lane, (well uneventful other than having to pump various tyres up on the way down) and a stop for a photo call of the view! (it was worth going just for the view)
Can I let you into a secret?? I almost enjoyed myself but shhhh don't tell Pete!
Erm what you doing next weekend Pete?? !!! PETE??!!!
Sarah Cooper
During the week Pete had expressed an interest in going caving on Saturday after his little break from it.. good I thought, can get back underground, but Pete had other ideas! He must have been busy flicking through his self written book "1001 reasons to not go caving" (written using his pen name- Mr. Z. Oids)
The excuse he plucked up was "my battery is dead" so even though batteries can be hired he decided he wasn't go caving and decided to do some offroading instead, so the map was dragged out and a route fashioned.
All seemed simple as we left the women and kids behind, listen to that I said to Pete, silence! Bliss, but with a cruel twist, the journey started easy with a road I could have done in my car followed by a rougher track but nothing bad. We were headed towards the Dales and drove up a very busy Barbondale.. The track loomed and was fairly easy going for its first part but then became more rutty but dry weather made progress easy but still interesting.
After a sharp bend the track took on a different character, it became more technical, which was ok to start with until we reached a drop created by lack of maintenance, the stream had washed away half the track. This was by-passed on one side and we continued further until it was decided the track was becoming too dodgy, especially when there's only the one vehicle. So a retreat was made, this went fine until the washed out bit appeared again, take it on the side again, easy enough you might think but the track had other ideas and part of it collapsed resulting in the Fronty being stranded on its back end.. nooooooo we thought, this wasn't good, a few miles from the nearest road and it was already late noon.
With no tools we devised our own using stones and after a huge amount of effort we managed to slowly get it moving, bit by bit it moved until we had shifted it 90degrees. After a few more rock movements and pushing by myself it was on the move and Pete managed to reverse it out of the problem… only to reverse it straight into a muddy section, nice one! Well, back to square one, we were still miles from a road and just as incapacitated as before. Pete phoned Shelley and Sarah (who has a Landy and was staying over) but they didn't believe a word of it so, no problem we thought, we have our primitive stone tools (just like cavemen eh!) and I can push/pull again. Foolish thoughts as no matter what we did it wouldn't budge, it was stuck but despite that Pete refused to admit to it actually being "stuck" a further phone call or two and Shelley and Sarah finally decided we might be stuck so it was decided they would come and pick us up.
As it was getting late and the thought of night time offroading being too risky it was decided to abandon the Fronty and meet the good ladies on the road, we grabbed the valuables and started our near 6mile walk, a few miles along the track then the rest on the road which we walked down to keep us occupied while the Cooper tour bus arrived from its one hour (ish) journey..
The following day we returned in Sarahs Landy, she was most delighted to have the chance at some offroading. As the track became more testing so did the comments from Sarahs mouth, it was just as well she had to hold the steering wheel really otherwise her hands may have been round Petes neck! I just sat in the back and kept quiet, anything for an easy life! After arriving at the "not stuck", temporarily motionless vehicle the kids started playing in the mud, but we told Pete he should try working harder with the spade and leave the three minis to play in the mud on their own. We tried again and even had three of us pushing the non-stick Fronty but that didn't work so we had to get the Landy to pull it out - quick and easy.. and then the Landy turned round it got stuck too, so the Fronty pulled the Landy out not before the tow rope broke (I'm glad I wasn't stood any closer!), great fun eh! Once that was done with the simple process of heading back along the track started, with thankfully no more problems encountered…
A number of lessons have been learnt from that day, I'll let you use your imagination as to what they could be..
Duncan Jones