Many people describe their 4×4 experiences as fun-filled family frolics. I would describe a lot of mine as fear drenched and littered with the potholes of domestic discord.
I’m most afraid of mud, and it’s all due to a nasty little incident I refer to as ‘A Nasty Interlude. Valley Of A Thousand Hills, January 2008’.
The Valley is on our doorstep, and our neighbours Rick and Linda are always exploring the area. Once, when they had visitors from the U.K., we decided to form a convoy and show them the sights.
Their visitors, Celia and Dave, came with us in our vehicle. Their children went with Rick and Linda, who also have two kids. I don’t remember much about Dave, except he wore an immaculate safari suit with long socks and sandals.
Celia seemed very nervous. ‘Cor, it’s quite wild innit!’ she exclaimed as we descended into the Valley and red cliffs rose all around us. ‘I already feel a bit nervous.’
‘When you live in Africa you get used to it,’ I replied pompously.
We’d been travelling for about two hours, getting deeper and deeper into the Valley, when Rick pulled for a toilet break and we took the lead. We crossed the river and that’s when things began to go pear shaped…
There had been a lot of rain, and the mud was extremely thick. We were going more and more slowly until we stopped going forward altogether, and slid gently sideways into a large drainage ditch choked with rocks. The vehicle tipped onto two wheels, rocked, and then settled on all four wheels.
I swore, screamed and stuck my head between my knees, but, Celia only bounced up and down shouting, ‘Blimey, that was close!’
I was still trying to think of something terse and adult to say, perhaps about her not fully understanding the dangers, when Rick and Linda drove leisurely passed, waved and disappeared around the corner. Larry put our vehicle into four low and tried to drive out of the ditch, but we only slid deeper into the mud.
I screamed again and started crying, whilst Celia took my hand and attempted to comfort me.
Larry was getting frustrated, and to add to his woes, Rick came strolling back down the road. He was wearing that expression peculiar to unstuck 4×4 drivers, seeing a counterpart who’s in trouble; a mixture of delight, smugness and conceit. Luckily he also drives a Land Rover, so we didn’t have one of ‘those’ debates.
Rick and Larry started discussing the problem. Larry, slapping his forehead with frustration, calling himself a ‘silly fool’, among other things, and saying that he’d been in the wrong gear. Apparently, if he now put the vehicle into the correct gear he would just ‘pop’ out of the ditch and all would be fine. He asked me to get down and film aforementioned ‘popping out’.
Obviously I panicked and started crying again. I mean what was to stop Larry popping out of the ditch, across the road and down into the ravine to his death?
Finally, after a lot of drama, whining and attention, I calmed down enough to grab the video camera and disembark. 2008 was one of my heavier years, I was shaped rather like a giant gobstopper on stilts, and my jeans didn’t fit me. Instead I was wearing a brown jersey, heavy cotton skirt and cream open-toed sandals. Standing in the ditch I could feel cold, slimy mud seeping around my toes.
A large group of people had gathered to watch us, and a group of wide-eyed children were staring at me in awe (or so I like to think). I perked up and, feeling rather like David Attenborough, I gave the kids a smile and began to fiddle with the camera. The lens whirred in and out, green lights flickered importantly… and then the battery fell out and bounced into a puddle.
I retrieved the battery, and it was when I was wiping it on my skirt that I felt myself sliding slowly backwards down the hill. I was mud surfing! I don’t know the correct name for it so I’ve made one up ‘Murfing’. With the camera gripped firmly to my chest and tears trickling miserably down my cheeks, I murfed steadily down the hill towards the river.
To make matters worse, my murfing seemed to infuriate a large and aggressive orange chicken. It charged out of the bushes, squawking and flapping and began pecking at my feet and ankles.
Larry always insists that you don’t get orange chickens, so it was probably brown or golden. Well fine! Then it was a very bright brown chicken and it had glowing red eyes and a needle sharp beak.
None of our party had noticed my predicament, and the enraged chicken still in attendance was gathering momentum. We were heading straight for the river, but thankfully I hit a patch of gravel, and fell over onto my back with a gentle ‘huff’. I lay there for a while staring up at the grey sky, whilst the chicken strutted around me planning his next attack. Luckily a group of smiling, excited locals, came to my aid, chasing away the chicken and pulling me back up to the Land Rover.
When I got back to our group, the vehicle was standing firmly back on the road, and there was much smiling, slapping of backs and hand shaking going on. I poked Larry in the kidneys and he turned and asked me excitedly if I’d got any good footage of the Landy. It was only because I was so relieved to see him alive and not dead at the bottom of a mountain that he escaped having a camera inserted somewhere inappropriate.
I asked why nobody had noticed my dilemma, and Larry said he had noticed me lying in the road with a large bird flapping around my legs, but he’d thought I was trying to get some interesting perspective shots of the vehicle.
Once I was safely back in the vehicle I decided to completely lose my temper and started shouting out the window, demanding to know the whereabouts of the chicken so I could ‘rip its’ bleepity-beep head off, for bleep’s sake!’ Larry hastily drove away with me still shaking my fist and bellowing belligerent rubbish like ‘Death To The Chicken!’
Fortunately, I’m a seasoned off-roader and carry my own 4×4 recovery kit: a large box of Calmettes and a flask of sherry. I set about ‘recovering’ myself, and my kit took a major hammering. The roads were very wet and Larry was doing that totally unnatural ‘accelerating into the skid’ thing, which I think should be banned. Upon going into a skid I think one should just close one’s eyes and jam on the brakes, but that’s just my opinion.
Eventually we arrived at our destination, which may have been Wartburg, although by then I was beyond caring. I do, however, remember Celia blethering on and on about the wonderful scenery and the undulating hills until, still officially being in a sulk, I snapped, ‘Yes Celia, the hills are undulating, that’s what hills do, mountains even more so and plains not at all, rendering them generally boring and to be avoided. That, in a nutshell, is what scenery is.’
I could see Larry glaring at me in the rear view mirror, and Dave’s nose had gone bright red. Celia seemed on the verge of tears. Well tough, after all, none of them had been traumatised like I had.
We had originally planned that upon arrival at wherever-we-were- going, we would have a meal at the hotel, but now we couldn’t because I had dried and was dropping large chunks of smelly mud all over the place. I also had a headache (an unfortunate side-effect of my recovery kit), and some of my chicken bites had started to sting.
We ended up getting pies from a tiny garage. The others didn’t eat theirs, claiming they were mouldy, but I ate mine – I’d made sure I had chicken. Ha! I washed it down with the remainder of my sherry and started to feel more cheerful. I was even ready to go on a bit, but my foul (good pun) mood had finally affected the others and they all just wanted to go home. Celia even went so far as to swap places with one of her children, and travelled back with Rick and Linda.
We found the shortest route to the N3 and drove home with no further incidents, except for two stops so I could be sick.