This past weekend saw the annual Birthday Party of Ottawa Valley Land Rovers
held in the ever familiar location of Silver Lake Ontario, about an hour
east Of Ottawa. The owners group is made up of mostly civilian Land Rovers
but there are surprisingly quite a number of ex military Land Rovers in the
fold.
We saw this year a number of our American cousins make the trek north to
come play in the Canadian mud.
Present this year were three 101 forward controls, owned by Jarred (cant
remember his last name), Dave Lowe from Toronto, and finally Howard, with
his Para recovery beast. All three are very impressive off road and when put
up against a Unimog, yes we had one of them aswell, perform with remarkable
agility.
I have to say for sheer brute force the 101 has to take it hands down as the
machine is so light with the all aluminium body and the 3.5 V8 power. For
those of you unfamiliar with the 101 FC it is a box with a wheel in each
corner, flat front, very little rear body panels, hoops and a tarp. It was
designed as a gun tractor and does that job very well.
All in attendance were two ex mil 110's one coming from Eire and having been
completely rebuilt into lhd and made into a very tidy machine by its
American owner and my 110 from BATUS.
Two Lightweights or Airportables were also there, Murray Jackson of Ottawa
has a very tidy and well kept one that came from BATUS a good number of
years ago and is now his daily driver.
The other lightweight is owned by wild man Kevin Willey who has his semi
military stock with extra add ons like cb radios and sound system but still
in camo etc. He lays on his machine hard and it gets in the worst of the
mud.
We spent an enjoyable day Saturday cruising some light and medium off road
trails, small groups of vehicles, mostly seven or so travelling a number of
pre run trails. We had lots of mud and water up here as we have had rain for
about the last month non stop.
At the end of the day when we were waiting for supper Howard put on a
spectacular display of very rapid recovery with his 101 FC Para recovery.
This vehicle is equipped with a folding jib in the rear of the load bed, he
was at Aberdeen or Pennsylvania so you may have seen it around. One of the
club members was having his 40th birthday soon and the ladies in the club
painted his tatty old land Rover with washable paints while he was out
running the trails as a passenger in another truck. The wrote all kinds of
things on the vehicle in lurid colours.
Anyway Howard with Jarred as the assistant appeared in the 101 with orange
light flashing and jib deployed.
They pulled in front of Dixons 109 and back up to the bumper. Out the two of
them jumped and while the rest of us, about 110 people watched in amusement,
they hooked up the 109, a few strokes of the handle and Howard had it up on
the jib hook. Both of them pilled back into the 101 and revved it up and
took off out of the field with amazing speed. from time in to time out off
the field they only took about 3 minutes to get it done. Quite the well
planned show. All to much laughter from the assembled crowd.
Anyway we had alot of rain on the Saturday night and when we left at Sunday
Lunch time the two remaining
101's and the MOG were heading back off into the bush for more deep mud play
time.
It was good to see the over 60 Land Rovers there but the military ones do it
for me the most.
rgds
Robin In Canada
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jul 02 2000 - 23:51:31 PDT