The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

Ok, this snow has been fun, but…

… now we’re so low on heating oil, firewood, coal and food that the sense of humour reserves are looking a bit depleted! School’s off the menu and the kids refuse to play in the snow anymore as they’re bored of it now. They go mental after being cooped up inside for this long, so my wife has inflated the boxing bag that they were given for Christmas in the optimistic hope that they might stop hitting each other and us.

Drastic evasive action needed and so I went on a crazy solo excursion (after spending an hour digging the car out of the snow and defrosting it). I returned with coal, a little wood and food. The car got me there and nearly all the way back, but I needed a spade and lots of gravel to make it back up our…

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This is not the glorious image of the winter solstice sunrise that I had been planning for you. Events conspired against that.

The original plan had been to drive up to a semi-secret location in the South Downs and take a picture of the sun rising in what were originally forecast to be clear cold skies.

Yesterday morning I was driving the four miles from home to the gym but all four wheels of the Land Rover Defender lost traction on black ice and I slid headfirst into a substantial tree at about 25 miles-per-hour. I walked away from the car-and-tree amalgamation and felt very lucky to be in much better shape than either. My next thought was that my wife and kids were due to set out on the same road an hour after I had. My mobile phone was on charge at home. I ended up having to…

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After a long stretch at the desk yesterday I treated myself to a dusk trip up into the Downs in the Land Rover. Leaving the main road along a little known and steep track, the tarmac turned to slush then hard, packed grey and white ice. It is the first time in years that I have come across a situation that my Defender has struggled in. The words of a 4×4 expert I know came to mind, ‘Sometimes the number of wheels doesn’t matter, if there is no traction, then there is no traction.’ I parked, wedged some rocks under the wheels and scrambled up a steep shortcut on all fours.

The rewards were moody fluctuating skies, an angry wind and great views.