Hello all hope you’re all doing well and hope the New Year has been kind to everybody so far! I’m still fairly new to this offroading sport of abusing man and machinery and I haven’t got a clue how but I managed to win an event it was my first Tyro and it was at Mealsgate, even worse is I have absolutely no idea how to write a report on one so this could be interesting!!

Anyway I’m Andy Kipling or Kip is who I’m usually known, I’ve done a few events before, I sort of threw myself in poo creek without a paddle by starting with an RTV and then a winch event at Santon Bridge, which was an eye opener! I share my Jeep Wrangler who we named (Stella) driving duties with my girlfriend Nikki who I will say is the better driver, a bit more thought goes in to her approach to things, where I’m like a little kid with a big toy and a heavy size 10 right foot.

The day started off like a normal Sunday, me up and about raring to go, wanting to get Stella warmed up and Nic waiting till the last possible second to crawl out of bed and curl up in the passenger seat for the adventure of trying to find the site for a days playing, we have a nice man in a range rover who we met on the road and who was also sort of lost, to thank for getting us to the site as the road we wanted to take had a lot of barriers and a big closed sign on it, not going up that route then!

The idea of this weekend was to let Nikki do the Tyro and I was going to take pictures, but once we got there it looked too much fun, so I thought I’d better have a go as well, which turned out to be a good idea. So we both signed on and Stella was checked over. I had the joy of going second on the first section which was a good tester for the rest of the day’s driving. I was the only driver to get stuck in section one, which didn’t look to good as Stella made it through no problem the second time with Nic driving.

The second section was a tight start then it got hilly, but Stella made it through and only managed to flatten the number 1 gate. I think every one else did fairly good on the first two sections, which was a good start to the day. Section three was a bit of a blur then we got to section four! This is where everybody struggled on gate 9 apart from the long wheel base Mitsubishi Pajero which made it look easy. So later on they gave us another run with a few alterations, especially to gate 9. Section five was a tester on top of the hill with some deep ruts, short steep climbs and some very sharp turns.

Section six was just before dinner and was a good test of steering and suspension travel, the short wheel bases did well over the tight cross axle sections, some vehicles found it a bit harder with the lack of ground clearance. After a good dinner break, which gave us chance to warm up and stock up on pies and coffee, we carried on with the rest of the day. Seen as we had completed all of the sections set out (due to the smaller number of entrants), they decided to run some of them backwards, which made it a bit more interesting. Nikki wished we’d given up at dinner time as she went on to demolish some of the remaining sections and bump her score up nicely which did not go down to well!!

Section seven was an interesting one with gate’s 3 & 2 beside each other with not much room to turn especially in a Jeep with the turning circle of a bus, so there was a rather large detour into the undergrowth, as there was no limit to how wide you could go. The Jeep did get round without crossing tracks but the size of the detour was questionable, others found slightly tighter lines and made it look easy. The Mitsubishi did really well until passing through gate 1 on top of a fairly steep hill where it managed to get perched quite nicely on his belly with all 4 wheels off the ground.

Section nine was the re-run of section four with a few alterations, this time I think every one made it through the number 9 gate. Nikki managed to get Stella bellied out at gate 6, due to her little size 5 feet not making full use of the big throttle peddle! Then we hit the last section and I think everyone thought the flags on the gates were on the wrong side, but they weren’t and this caused some major confusion among competitors, this meant there were a lot of debating lines on how to get through the gates and forward thinking of the next gate so you didn’t cross your tracks. It looked impossible and it was to most apart from those with a shunt, even then it was hard and I don’t think any one cleaned it! Then Haff must of got bored of watching people struggle and decided to have a little play to show everyone how it was done, and made it look easy!

Overall I think a good day was had by all, and I would like to say thanks to all the marshals and those who helped to set up, it was a really good event and the weather was kind to us, thankfully! I’d also like to thank Stella for not falling to bits (not that she ever would??) and showing the Land Rovers who’s boss!

Kip