It was Abingdon 4×4 Festival at the weekend, which is an absolutely superb event aimed at both complete novices and more experienced off-roaders as well as providing a great day for visitors who turn up in a normal car (but are guaranteed to leave wanting a 4×4!). It’s hosted on MoD land near Abingdon that’s usually totally off-limits to the public and put on by a huge group of volunteers with one purpose, to raise as much money as possible for the local air ambulance. Because it’s all volunteers, and a lot of blagging is involved, the amount raised (after costs) is staggeringly huge (I think it’s in the tens of thousands).

Anyway, whenever I’ve been in the country and LaaLaa has been roadworthy (and one year when she wasn’t) I’ve tried to get over there and spend donate lots of money and/or help out. This year I did two marshalling stints which still gave me enough time to have a look round and have a couple of goes of the very long off-road course.

On Saturday morning, with the sun shining, I took a neighbours 5yr-old round which he described as “awesome”. Unfortunately I didn’t realise he’d started to grasp the concept of reading and so he was able to point out which way the hard route was so ribs, that were healing nicely after collision (between me+road bike and crazybelgian+moped on my charity cycle ride), got a pounding! The wife of the chief marshal didn’t help either because when I stopped to say hello (have known them for years) she said to my passenger “are you going through the big mud run?”. Hmmm. Like I had a choice after he knew that was an option. Thanks Lisa

The mud run at Abingdon is long and deep and LaaLaa a) doesn’t have a raised air intake and b) has a petrol engine (for those that don’t know, petrol engines require electrics to run so don’t like water, diesels generally don’t need electrics and can even run submerged). But as I say, no choice. We got through the mud run with a nice bow wave (means pushing the water away from you steadily so it doesn’t flood the engine) but the exit was a challenge and bow wave came back, drowned engine and filled up footwells with muddy water, which my young co-driver thought most funny. At least he has a new expression “WD40 can fix anything” and after 5 minutes we were going again, albeit with a smell of hot mud and WD40 filling the cab.

Sunday at Abingdon was more sun and more fun. It’s great marshalling as not only are you doing your bit to ensure the event can happen, you see all the beginners discovering this new experience, totally enjoying themselves and amazed at where their unmodified car on ordinary tyres will go. Unfortunately, the journey home wasn’t without it’s problems as both rear wheel brake cylinders blew leaving me with no brakes. Not happy as I’ve only just had them done (won’t be using cheap after-market parts again) and LaaLaa and I are meant to be marshalling at a 100km off-road MTB event on Saturday. Brakes are one of the few routine jobs I don’t tackle myself (too much hassle) so hope man-that-can will be able to do something quick.

All in all, great fun and I hope they raised loads of cash. I’ll leave you with a couple more pictures.

p.s. I picked road bike up from The Big Adventure Store this afternoon (only a small shop but really nice people and I have a lot of faith in their mechanic, Jason, even if he did refer to my bike as a hybrid). Both wheels trued and the gears put right at a cost of £25 which I didn’t was bad at all. Just need new tyre to arrive and we’re good to go again.