A day out around the lanes of North Somerset – the tracks were dry and dusty after 3 weeks of sunshine and no rainfall – what happened to “April Showers?”!
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April Sunshine in the Lanes…
Marksbury Greenlanes in February
A day on the lanes around Marksbury Plain near Bath with fellow North Somerset Land Rover Club member Patrick in his Series III.
Winter Snow Trip in the Mendip Hills
We just spent 2 days out and about in the Somerset’s Mendip hills, in the deep snow that we were lucky enough to get this year (speaking as Landrover drivers of course, everyone else is fed up of it!). Day two featured a nice rescue job for us. On top of the Mendip plateau there’s a depression at Charterhouse, where the lane dips down into a small valley, where ancient Roman and older copper mines are found and the landscape is pitted and worked making it a real magical place – in the snow it looked even more wild and rugged. So traversing this fantastic landscape in very cold and fog-bound conditions when we came around the bend in the depression we found an astravan stuck in the snow, unable to make it up the climb. He’d gotten into the valley OK but couldn’t get out at either end – by the time we arrived he’d been there 2 hours, with no mobile signal and was resorting to try and dig out the snow ahead of his vehicle, using a dustpan and a screwdriver – he’d managed about 8 feet, so only another 400 or so to go. Anyway, lucky chap the LRE crew turned up well equipped with a TD5 defender and Hicap, and Simon “The Engineer” had his tow rope out again in no time for another rescue. He’s used it plenty in recent days, delivery vans, a milk float and even a forklift have been pulled out of the snow by his trusty TD5!
Here’s the video of the trip and the ‘rescue-event’
And here the ‘rescue’:
Series IIa Rebuild Project – Kick Off!
We’ll be covering a great Series IIa rebuild project over the winter months – here’s the video to set the scene, full project-start post to follow soon…
Black Kelly Kettle?
Well yes and no – it’s an “Eydon Kettle” or STORM kettle, and originates from the simple copper kettles made in the West Coast of Ireland fishing communities, the same part of the world as the more well known Kelly Kettle company kettles, but these are made in the UK by the Eydon Kettle Company founded in the 1970 and now going stronger than ever with worldwide interest in and use of these fantastic devices. The exciting news, they’re now bringing out a black version of the “Popular” model which will be on sale from Jan 1st and by all accounts it will be very distinctive. We’re expecting one in the post at the moment, and will publish a feature here on it, so stay tuned…!
[Update] – The Black Eydon Kettle arrived today and it’s a beauty! More to follow….
