The strange attraction of four-wheel drive

The short story of my Austin Champ, licensed in the UK as MYA 713E, and ruminations upon both the joy and the despair of owning it.

When, several years ago, Martin Hesp first talked to me about writing for his website, I told him that I was rather busy rebuilding an early Willys jeep, and wasn’t sure if I had the time to write. He was, I recall, quite dismissive, saying I should be writing and not just ‘doing up old jeeps’. It is not for me to say who is right or wrong in this instance, other than to say that I enjoy doing both, but this particular old jeep had been taking up space in my garage for years and years, and so I really, really needed to bring it back to life thus not only justifying my storing it for god knows how many long years, but also to put a long-postponed project to rest. Then, maybe then, I might get back to writing.

It’s kind of hard to know just when all this jeep madness started. Born as I was just after the war, life was defined by growing up in its aftermath. My family, their families, and all of their friends and neighbors spoke of it constantly. Not that it was the sole subject of discussion, indeed, far from it, but it was a constant, a reference point, as in ‘before the war’, ‘since the war’ etc. And as I grew up, it was the focus of films, radio plays, books and magazines. And of course, comics. Illustrated tales of derring-do, heroic stories of heroism, lantern-jawed muscle-bound figures striding fearlessly into harm’s way, and emerging unscratched, unbloodied, firm of resolve and clear of conscience.

Visiting my grandparents in London we’d walk past rows of bomb sites, the houses on either side of entire streets flattened, just piles of blackened bricks among the nettles and brambles. A drive in the country would take us past pillboxes in hedgerows, odd-looking concrete buildings, and big fields that mum or dad would point out as being an RAF airfield just a few years before.

My friends and I never played Cowboys and Indians, but rather British and Germans, chasing each other with toy guns, or more often, teaming up together to fight imaginary Germans. And when we weren’t doing that it was playing with toy soldiers, toy tanks, lorries and jeeps. And as I grew older, reading books on World War Two, of which there seemed to be an endless and growing supply. I frequented Green’s, a grubby, dark and poky newsagent just off High Street in Winchester. Mr. Green was a gloriously shabby man, usually wearing an old moth-eaten woolen cardigan, horn-rimmed glasses, and aided and abetted by his mother, an aging old crone with white hair going yellow, matching a mouthful of broken and equally yellow teeth. She seemed, to my young eyes, to be way north of a hundred. The counter took up about two-thirds of one side of the shop, the top piled high with magazines and newspapers. On the wall behind were shelves of cigarette cartons, tobacco tins and cigarette papers. Mr. Green inevitably had a soggy brown stub of a roll-up in his mouth. Bound newspapers lay in bundles about the floor, blocking the way to overflowing bookshelves crammed with paperbacks. There were books everywhere, mainly used, although there was a small case with new ones, tomes that rarely seemed to get bought.

On the pavement outside, there were wooden cases on each side of the door, cases that were moved inside the shop each night. These were jammed with books, hardbacks with and without dust covers, and paperbacks, paperbacks by the score. Penguin, Ace, Pan, Hodder and Stoughton … some dogeared, others scribbled on, here a missing back cover, there a creased and torn front cover … and the cover art ranged from the austere early Penguins, with their standardized orange and black designs to the stupendously lurid Ace and Pans, the crime and thriller genres featuring invariably buxom young ladies in a state of semi-undress projecting either terror or come-hither seduction in their eyes, and the rows of war novels, memoirs of those who endured and survived, tales of those who didn’t, recounting of time spent as prisoners of war in Germany and in the East under the Japanese, spine tingling titles such as ‘Camp on Blood Island’, mingled amongst ‘The Colditz Story’ and ‘The Wooden Horse’ … I’d stand there carefully checking the titles, examine the covers, opening pages at random, and then finally selecting which ones were worthy of my pocket money, take them inside and hand my money over to Mr Green or his mother, and then hurry home, aglow with the purchase, bubbling inside with anticipation at the evening’s read.

My bedroom became filled with books of all kinds. Christmas usually brought a smattering of classics, Dickens, Dumas, DeFoe, and Scott, whose works nestled up against a growing collection of paperbacks by Leslie Charteris, chronicler of Simon Templar, the Saint. Next to Charteris was Crompton, Richmal Crompton, who wrote of the adventures of William Brown, the eternal schoolboy, whose adventures never ceased to amuse. Richmal, whom, I had learned to my astonishment, was a woman, had very neatly nailed the essence of boyhood. 

It was the war books, however, that took up most of the space. A huge twenty-volume collection of weekly dispatches put out by The Times during WW1 took up one long shelf, as did a series of magazines issued by HM Government during WW2, mainly propaganda themes items such as ‘Bloody but Unbowed’ about the London Blitz, with a black and white photo of St Paul’s Cathedral obscured by smoke during an air raid.

So this was the theme, or at least the background, to my growing up in the UK under the long shadow of WW2. The arrival of Bill Haley in 1954 broadened my worldview, and as the years went by, the games of British and Germans grew old, and the fascination and attraction of Rock n Roll grew. By the early sixties, the WW2 books were sold or given away, and writers such as Kerouac, Sillitoe, Miller and Lawrence took their place.

Summers spent in Minehead, West Somerset, working summer jobs washing dishes and flipping burgers, introduced me to a shaggy-haired black leather jacketed lunatic with a mad sense of humor, ironic and twisted, whose name was Brad, and together we spent hours discussing the finer points of making a campfire, how sensibly insane Zen Buddhism was, and how ridiculous the modern world was. Brad rode a motorbike, whereas I didn’t learn to drive until I was 18, and had spent much of my teenage years cycling, both as a sport and as a simple, cheap and available mode of transport. Cars, I thought, weren’t very interesting, although I did admire the ex-War Department lorries that I would encounter when out on the bike. The attraction was ill-defined at first, but part of it was their utilitarian looks, the lack of chrome and flash, the sense of sturdy usefulness, a certain modesty born of pride in their obvious adaptability to all terrains. To Brad and I, during the first stirrings of counter-cultural consciousness - we were reading Kerouac and Ginsberg, after all - vehicles like these, stripped of their military implications, were the antithesis of ‘modern consumer rubbish’, which phrase epitomized our anathema of current society. No need to add that Bob Dylan was on the turntable too.

Back in Winchester after the summer of 1964, I returned to Eastleigh Tech to resume my A levels, with a vague idea of becoming a journalist. There was a new influx of students that year, among them was Norman Reader, a chap from Kenya, who had moved back to England, his parent’s home country, borne back to the home country on the winds of change blowing through the remnants of the British Empire. We became friendly and one lunchtime he said to me, ‘Bob, come and take a look at this’ and led me out to the college parking lot. He walked over to an ex-army jeep, a Willys MB, the canvas top down and the windshield lying flat on the bonnet. It was a dusty olive drab, with canvas seat cushions, and non-directional tires, the type we called track grips. Not only did the vehicle have an undefinable yet very real attraction for me, but also, to my chagrin and regret, had the same effect upon the then girl of my dreams, Marguerite, whom I was attempting to woo. From that day forth, Marguerite was to be seen seated in the passenger seat of that old Willys, a dreamy smile on her face, and those long flowing black locks streaming behind her, undulating in the breeze. Prior to the arrival of this jeep, Marguerite and I would often walk the few miles back to Winchester from Eastleigh, following the course of the River Itchen, enjoying the late summer glow through the scented meadows, resting now and then at a stile, halfway over, to share a view, a thought, a smile, amidst the ever-present hum and drone of insects, and the very fecundity of our surroundings … that indefinable and eternal feeling of forever summer, that summer which is forever youthful, forever golden, forever forever in our minds, an icon of times long gone by, winking at us from a faraway distance. 

And then Norman and his jeep had arrived, and those walks and Marguerite really were things of the past. 

By 1965, so was college, and by late August I was working in London, in a dream job at Island Records that lasted a scant ten months or so before I was laid off during a financial crisis at the company, and so, drifting back to Somerset in the summer of 1966, I met up with Brad again. We took to reading the Exchange and Mart, a weekly magazine full of classified advertisements, selling anything and everything. We noted that week after week, the Books section contained ads from a gentleman requesting ‘Anything by Doris Lessing’, while another section contained an ad by one Harold Bates, advertising his invention that enabled your car to run on chicken shit. Yes, you read that quite correctly, chicken shit. It was some kind of manure converter that Harold had perfected, and now he was selling it to the world at large. This was way before The Whole Earth Catalog, of course, but this was the way the wind was blowing. And then there was the ‘Jeeps’ section …. This we perused with both avidity and a growing sense of wonder. The war had been over by twenty years or so by then, and surplus jeeps were everywhere. And so were Austin Champs.

After the war, the British Rover company made their version of a jeep, the Land Rover, which had started as a prototype built on a Willys MB chassis - the wartime jeep - but the British Army wanted a vehicle that was designed specifically for their needs, and they turned to Austin. The result was the Austin Champ. A four-wheel drive vehicle with a Rolls Royce B40 engine, waterproofed electrics, and a unique transmission that with the flip of one lever, enabled the vehicle to be driven backward as fast as it could go forward. While I understood that such a feature might be rather useful if one encountered the enemy blocking the way forward on a very narrow country lane where there would be no room nor time to turn around, it did seem a bit defeatist, to say nothing of the terror of getting up to fifth, and top gear, driving backward at 80mph.

The army did purchase a few thousand Champs but encountered severe mechanical problems with the rear axle, which was directly related to the reverse gear function. Maintenance costs ballooned, questions were asked in Parliament, and not all that long after the introduction of the Champ, it was replaced by the Land Rover, and the Champs were sold off as surplus. And ads for them began to appear in the Exchange and Mart. Brad and I examined the ads with interest. One that ran week after week exhorted readers to ‘Be Thankful. Be Wise. Derek Adams will answer all your Austin Champ needs’ and gave an address in Little Gaddesden, near Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire. Mr. Adams’ ad stated he had what appeared to be an unlimited supply of ex-War Department Austin Champs for sale, Austin Champs straight from the army, never registered in the civilian world. Champs with low mileage, Champs with good rear ends, Champs that would run forever. Underwater even.

Brad called Mr. Adams and a deal was struck, and an arrangement was made that he would buy one of his Austin Champs. The date was fixed and Brad and I left Minehead on a Thursday afternoon to hitch-hike to Little Gaddesden, a journey of approximately one hundred and eighty miles. 

We were teenagers, be-smitten by ’The Dharma Bums’, the austere holiness of hitch-hiking as the most ethical means of traveling, and the appealingly spartan mode of sleeping under the stars, tentless, just a down sleeping bag and a groundsheet. A book that we had recently discovered was a book published in 1903 by one Harry Roberts, ’The Tramp’s Handbook’. This glorious guide to vagabondage extolled the virtues of the roaming life, with useful hints on how to survive financially along life’s roadways by learning knife sharpening, how to repair pots and pans, and to survive physically by learning how to cook over open fires and many other essential requisites of the open air life. Bedazzled by these possibilities, we had persuaded a blacksmith friend of ours to fashion for us a set of iron cooking sticks: two stakes designed as uprights with crooks at the top to support a horizontal bar from which could be suspended a billy can. These were our pride and joy. We both had feather and down ex-army sleeping bags, laid out over a rubberized ground sheet and then rolled into cylinders and fastened with a belt at each end, and with a further belt passing from one end to the other which was slung over the shoulder. Spare socks were rolled up inside the sleeping bag, together with a bottle of wine and a haggis - a gift from a friend who had recently returned from Scotland - and the cooking sticks inserted between the two belts, thus stiffening the rolled cylinder. The two vertical sticks went on one bag, the horizontal stick on the other. To the lower belt was suspended a billy can and on the other bag one of those sets of aluminum three-in-one cooking kits. We had learned from another book on tramping - ‘Diary of a Supertramp’ by W. H. Davies, that such a bedroll was termed a bindle in the USA, and that the gentleman - for of course they were mainly men - who toted them were bindlestiffs. Mr. Davies, a Welshman, had spent much of his life tramping in the UK and the US, and indeed lost a leg riding the rails in the US.

And so we set off, walking out of Minehead, on the road to Williton, then Bridgewater, and then further east across the middle of southern England, not just heading to our destination with Mr Adams, but as pilgrims on our way our very Destiny itself - an Austin Champ. 

We had learned and adopted the lessons of ’The Tramps’ Handbook’ only too well. We were not only tramps in our imagination, we also looked the part. We were dressed in the usual faded and ragged denim jeans, the grubby combat jackets which were back then worn by the lumpen proletariat. Hitch-hiking is never a very easy way of getting around, and when there are two of you the odds against you both getting a ride are necessarily increased. Assuming the demeanor of a couple of scruffy tramps immediately quadruples those odds. 

We arrived in Williton by early evening, having walked the entire eight miles. Eight miles of interminable clink, clank, clink, clank of the cooking pots banging against the cooking sticks. The early jocularity of the adventure had turned to a grim silence. The road had been narrow, very narrow in places, flanked by tall hedgerows, no verges, the bottoms of the hedges bare red dirt from where the wheels of cars and trucks constantly scraped and chafed - the kind of road any responsible person would advise against walking along. It was, in fact, extremely dangerous, and car after car apprised us of this fact by angrily laying on their horns. We had tried a multitude of ways of raising our thumbs, describing parallelograms in the air, jerky angled slashes, long low sweeps in unison, attempts to summon the gods of good fortune, the drivers of happy countenance, the samaritans of compassion with their warm leather seats.

No rides had appeared. Clink, clank, clink, clank. Honk, honk, clink, clank. So there we were, footsore, hungry, and in Williton by sunset. We walked into Mother Shipton’s Cafe, and gloomily ordered beans on toast and cups of tea.

The night was spent in a field on the edge of Williton, and the morning started well, us getting a ride straight through to Bridgewater, thus sparing us the horrors of possibly having to walk the road through St. Audries, a length of road flanked on both sides by ten foot high stone walls. Being sideswiped by a car along there would have been dramatically more horrible than being pushed into a hedge. Stone walls have no give whatsoever. And then the day deteriorated into a reprise of Thursday. An eternity of clink clank, clink clank, and a fast-growing disappointment at the utter hostility of the car-owning populace. As nightfall approached we were still seventy miles from our destination, tired, with blistered feet, but not yet completely down and out. After all, Destiny was beckoning. The last ride had left us close to a copse on a small hill, and we decided to spend the night there, in the woods, a hundred yards or so away from the road. 

We unrolled our bindles, gathered firewood, and set up the cooking sticks. And looked at the haggis. Ever had haggis? Ever cooked haggis? Nope, us neither. A little unsure of the procedure, we examined it. It looked like a big round sausage, but really too big to cook in our aluminum frying pan without mashing it up, and too big to boil in the billy can. And by then we’d drunk all our water so that was out of the question anyway. So we cut it in half and put it in the frying pan, hoping that whatever fat was in the thing would suffice to fry it. It turned out to be peculiarly dry, and it just kind of burned rather than fried. Tired and grumpy, we ate what we could, and passed the wine back and forth, futilely trying to dodge the clouds of woodsmoke. Funny thing about woodsmoke. It has consciousness, you know. A malevolent kind of consciousness. No matter which way you turn, it follows you. You can watch it coming straight at you for a few minutes, and say to yourself, sanely and sensibly, that if I were to move to the other side of the fire, I would be out of the way. Well, good luck with that. The moment you move, that smoke senses the movement and your new position … nothing you can do … just have to sit there and cough and blink, and reflect upon the words of Dennis, Minehead’s local tramp, whom Brad and I had befriended the summer before. ’Twas Dennis who had spoken the celebrated sentiment, ‘I’s allus been partial to the smell of woodsmoke’. As we sat there, shrouded in the swirling smoke, a memory of Dennis came back to me, an occurrence that had happened earlier that summer. I had been working at Butlin’s, the big holiday camp in Minehead. Finishing a late night shift, I was pedaling my bike up the deserted and silent main street, known as The Parade, on my way home. It was about three or four in the morning. I was dog tired, so tired I was three-quarters asleep. In my hallucinated state, I saw what appeared to be a half-naked savage about to jump out at me from behind a tree, wielding a long spear. Immediately seizing the moment, and thus the advantage of surprise, I let out an immense shriek. In turn, the apparition let out an even louder shriek and jumped up in the air in shock and terror. And it was then that I saw the half-naked savage was, in fact, Dennis, about to rifle through a garbage can with a long pole. And then I was gone, pedaling home, now wide awake. I think that was the last time I saw Dennis.

Dawn broke, its faint light filtering through the trees dappling the ground around us. Stumbling around in the chill air, we rolled our bindles and pondered the remains of the haggis and the wine. Half a haggis, half a bottle of wine. A dilemma. To take with us or to abandon? We decided to bury both and return to this copse on our way back, thus booking a reservation at this fine locale for the following day.

The remainder of the journey went by in a bleary-eyed woodsmoke-tainted blur. We got a few rides and arrived in Little Gaddesden in the middle of the afternoon. 

We had spent the preceding weeks speculating upon this mysterious Derek Adams, his personage, his character, his situation. All we had to go by was the ad in the Exchange and Mart. We had thought we’d be arriving at some type of farm, with a possibly rural but assuredly eccentric riding around in a muddy Austin Champ. I suppose we should have been warned by the sophisticated PR-oriented ’Be Thankful, Be Wise’ wording in the ad, because we arrived at a very palatial house in large and well-kept grounds, with a shiny Jaguar in the driveway. We knocked on the door and were welcomed by a well-dressed well-coiffured young woman who, as she showed us in, turned her head and shouted ‘Derek, Derek, Mr. Bradshaw is here.’ 

We were shown into a large and luxurious kitchen with gleaming tiles, shining pans hanging from the ceiling, a long marble counter, doors opening out onto larger rooms, and through the windows more of the immaculate gardens. 

And then Mr. Adams himself.

A large florid man, in a luxurious huge fur-trimmed coat, a luxuriant black mustache and equally luxuriant black hair strode into the luxurious kitchen. He extended a luxuriously manicured hand festooned with rings and introduced himself. Brad and I felt rather small and extremely smelly. By this time three days had gone by since we had bathed or changed clothes, and the strange interaction of our situation with that of the Adamses was apparent, in both a visual and in an olfactory manner. The two of us eyed each other and smirked - both silently wondering just what Harry Roberts or W. H. Davies would have done in such a situation. Of course, neither of them would have even entertained the idea of owning an Austin Champ. 

Mr. Adams beckoned, and we followed him out of the kitchen door. He strode around the corner of a large building, and there they were. About a dozen Austin Champs. All unregistered, straight from the army. Brad handed over three hundred pounds, signed a piece of paper, and Adams pointed out the prize. ‘Does it have a spare tire?’ asked Brad, and Adams nodded and pulled one from one of the other vehicles, and heaved it up onto the bracket at the back of the vehicle. 

‘Here’s how it all works’ he said and indicated the gear shift. ‘Five forward gears, and this lever here puts everything in reverse. Just make sure you are stopped when you engage it of course’ and uttered a luxuriant chuckle, his mustache quivering. ’No key - just flip this switch, and you’re off’.

And with that he went back into the house, leaving us to our Destiny. Our unregistered Destiny. 

On our way to the Adams’ place, we had passed through a fairly large area of heathland, a wild area of scrub and small woodlands, and as Brad drove the Champ out of the gate and down the road, gingerly getting the feel of the vehicle, both of us knew where we were going. And after a mile or two, we were on the edge of the heath. Brad looked at me and grinned, turned the wheel, and drove off the road onto a rutted track. We looked at the four-wheel drive lever longingly. Although bumpy and rutted, the tires gripped, and the vehicle ambled along in two-wheel drive. The ride was surprisingly smooth, which was not surprising, as the Champ had for the times, a rather sophisticated independent suspension system. A copse on a steep hill loomed to our right, and we looked at each other. And grinned. And then giggled. Brad pulled off the track onto the greensward, through the bracken, and with a knowing look and a bemused smile as if he did this kind of thing every hour or so, pulled the four-wheel drive lever back with a flourish, and guided the vehicle up a short but very steep incline.  

The Champ handled the incline effortlessly. And crested the top. Which indeed was a crest. A very pointy one. So pointy that it acted as a fulcrum for the Champ which tilted, almost tottering, at the top, and then went down the other side. Minus the muffler which it transpired had been astride the pivot point. The now unrestricted motor roared, bellowed, rumbled, thundered, and as Brad hit the brakes the sound sank to a grumbling gurgle, punctuated by the cracks and bangs of small unrestrained backfires.

We looked at each other aghast. How could this be? The mighty Champ, humbled by a wee little ridge? Our feelings of immense pride in our vehicle’s invincibility were dashed. It obviously wasn’t invincible. No more than five minutes of off-roading and the bloody exhaust system had come off. In shocked silence, we picked up the pieces and put them in the back, and drove back towards the road.

As the gravity of the situation became apparent, our hitherto carefree attitude changed to one of disquiet, and then to concern framed in worry. We were driving an unregistered vehicle. No registration plates, just some chalked numbers where the plates should be, the remaining evidence of the auction at which Adams had bought the vehicle. And as the vehicle wasn’t registered, it wasn’t insured. All we had was the receipt from Adams that he had assured us would be sufficient to wave at the registration people, and they would register it. All very well for the registration folks, but not a deal closer as far as any local bobby might be concerned. We had naively figured that as it was Easter weekend, we could fairly quickly and hopefully innocuously drive back to Minehead early on Easter Sunday, and not arouse any attention. Such naivety overlooked the simple fact that the Champ itself was rather noteworthy. I mean, there were only about eleven thousand of them built in the first place. So it was a bit of a head-turner. And now, minus the muffler, it announced its presence from a great distance.

We drove off in conversational silence. We were silent, the Champ wasn’t. Brad drove gently, avoiding sudden downshifts that would create reverberating and thundering eruptions of violent noise. If someone passed us going the other way, the noise would momentarily increase as the passing car acted as a wall against the unrestrained exhaust, as did driving past houses, walls, or thick hedges. In fact, driving past pretty much anything.

A few miles down the road we picked up a hitchhiker, a wan and slight young man dressed in jeans and a thin jacket, and put him in the back, among the exhaust debris. Poor bastard must have been freezing, as we had no top. Being in front, the windshield kept us, if not warm, at least unfrozen. Because of the wind and the unbridled motor, any attempts at conversation with him were futile. The three of us sat in the Champ, our mutually grim silence enclosed in a wrapping of aural mayhem.

By about eight or nine we approached the copse at which we had spent the previous night. Brad pulled off the road, drove up the short track to the wood and cut the motor. A merciful silence enveloped us. We could hear the sounds of the woodland, the sough of the wind in the branches, chirps, and low whistles of wildlife. 

The serenity was palpable, as was the chill of the evening.

The hitchhiker shivered and wrapped his coat tighter around him. ‘Bloody ‘ell, cold in the back of your car, wow. So what are we doing here?’ While he was saying this, Brad strode over to where we had buried the wine and haggis the night before and started poking at the ground with a stick. No sooner than the words ‘We’re gonna stay the night here, you’re welcome to share our food’ had come out of my mouth the guy shook his head vigorously. ‘Don’t think so, thanks all the same’, and started to walk towards the road, eyeing Brad, who by now had unearthed a bottle of wine and an indescribable lump of something, with an expression of suspicion, incredulity, and horror. And then he was gone, into the night, vanished.

In a deflated mood we ate the awful haggis, drank the dregs of the souring wine, and vainly attempted to avoid the smoke of the fire, unrolled our sleeping bags and stretched out under the trees, exhausted.

Wakened by that cold shiver, that herald of the approaching dawn that occurs around 4 am, we rolled our bindles, threw them into the back of the Champ, and set off for Minehead. It was Easter Sunday and the roads were deserted. In those days the M4 was no more than a planner’s dream, and we roared through Oxford, howled through Swindon and bellowed through Bath, the tall Georgian terraced row houses bellowing back at us. I had not heard the term ‘white knuckle drive’ back then, but that is what it was. Every mile was fraught with apprehension, eyes feverishly checking the mirrors, the road ahead, the side roads … cops, cops, cops … they must hear us, surely they must hear us … and then from Bath down the A39, through Midsomer Norton, Wells, Glastonbury, Bridgewater and finally to Minehead, where we pulled up outside our flat in the early afternoon. Made it!

A minute later a local cop pulled up and looked at the Champ. That’s right …. Just a minute after we had arrived, and shut down the howling monster, we, and the Champ, were under the frowning gaze of the local constabulary. He obviously hadn’t seen such a vehicle before, and he got out and started to walk around it. And noticed the lack of registration plates. At least the motor had been shut down before he arrived. 

And so Brad, being the owner, entered the tangle of rules, regulations, must-does and hadn’t-dones that ensue when driving an unregistered vehicle on the Queen’s highway.

Like most problems and hassles that loom so large at the time, they were ultimately resolved, and within a few days were but a forgotten memory. The exhaust was repaired, the registration was completed and we started to explore the wild tracks and ancient roads of Exmoor. And what a gorgeous, beguiling, mysterious, and enchanting part of the southwest of England is Exmoor. Its wildness is wanton in its seductiveness, its winding lanes sunken by centuries of the egress and regress of carts, driven herds of lowing cattle, huge flocks of sheep, ocean-like in their vastness and billowing backs, undulating between the stone-faced earthen banks, topped by beech, ash and hawthorn hedges, where in places the untrimmed tops on either side had grown to form a green tunnel, blocking out the light and the sun, and then around a corner, past a gateway - a sudden window into and out onto the landscape - the hedges had been trimmed by a conscientious farmer, quite possibly laid in the traditional manner, where the saplings’ growth had been expertly sliced through with a sharp machete close to the root two-thirds of the way through, and the remaining stem bent uphill and tied - with baling twine of course - to the next tree. The result was a growing fence that came spring put forth green shoots and within a couple of months bright green leaves would cover the wounds inflicted by the hedger, and thus maintained the hedge grew thicker and thicker over the years. This scene is very familiar to those who live in these areas, but for those who don’t, let me explain baling twine. And the importance of baling twine to agriculture. When hay or straw was baled by what we now might think of as ‘old-fashioned’ balers - that is, those that packed hay into rectangular bales - those bales were held together by two lengths of twine. And that twine stayed on the bales until the bales were cut for feed or bedding - the twine ended up hanging over a nail in the barn or was stuffed into a handy pocket. Very possibly within the next half an hour or so, the farm worker might come across a gate with a broken hinge or latch. No problem, the twine’ll fix it. I remember a cartoon by Giles, obviously drawn in the last war, featuring two farm workers leaning on a gate in a decrepit farmyard, one with the evidence of the usefulness of baler twine everywhere, and one rustic saying to the other, ‘If that ‘itler invents a gas that’ll disintegrate baler twine, us’ll be done for’. By the sixties, the older hessian twine was being replaced by polypropylene twine. It was stronger, but sadly it slowly but inexorably added to the litter that increasingly became visible in the countryside. It was colored orange and took forever to break down. 

But Somerset and Exmoor was, and is, a lot more than little lanes and hedges. The old cottages and farms are stunning in their elementary and unassuming charm, the round stone pillars of the buildings edging the farm yards, the thatched roofs of the cottages, massive thick mantles of wheat straw or reed flowing down the steeply ridged roofs, looking for all the world like strange mushrooms, or weird furry creatures with huge eyebrows, and the endless misshapen geometric sprawl of fields, large, small, rectangular, square or oblong, and then the forests, steep combes covered in bracken and gorse, and at the bottom a brook, sparkling in the sun, rushing, rushing, rushing past fallen trees, under ancient stone bridges, across fords, all a gravity-driven charge to the sea.

It is impossible not to be enchanted, impossible not to be drawn into this kaleidoscope of fantastic beauty, and thus, with the undeniable ease of having four-wheel drive, we could be miles along a stony and grassy track, hall an hour from a tarred road; splash through a few yards of muddy water and carry on, the scent of west country mud drying on the exhaust system as scintillating as the smell of woodsmoke, and then reach a vantage point and stop the Champ, cut the motor, and look across the Bristol Channel to Wales, look east to the Quantock Hills and West to Dunkery Beacon, and breath in the wind from the Atlantic. The wonderful thing about this part of Somerset is that you are never far from the ocean - the Bristol Channel to the north, that great tongue of salt water that extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the West and laps the River Severn estuary in the east, in a kind of unending aquatic cunnilingus.

Salt is in the air, gulls abound, the entire place exudes a deep and serene fecundity, the moors an expanse of blazing orange gorse, purple heather, great sweeps of bracken and then close nibbled fine turf, with sheep and rabbit droppings, the evidence of regular customers at this popular buffet. And the wind comes in great blasts from the west, spilling secrets from afar that only the wheeling birds understand, so gusty and vigorous that we’d stand on rocks and bluffs and lean into it, a buffeting cushion of energy whipping our faces, pulling at our coats, billow after billow, until it reached such a crescendo that we’d whoop and shout with joy, crazed with the exhilaration of being alive in such a magical place. 

Ah, Somerset, blessed keeper of our souls.

In those days there were countless miles of old tracks, green lanes, drovers' paths that were technically public roads, and we explored mile after mile. It was the early days of four-wheel drive and we were cognizant of the damage that could be done by haplessly driving willy-nilly over open moorland. Sadly the latter-year unthinking and careless antics of city folks getting behind the wheels of their Land Rovers and other 4wd SUVs have now forced the authorities to close down many, if not all, of these ancient trackways to motor vehicles. 

The Champ was a lot of fun, but it had one big drawback. It used a lot of petrol, an awful lot. And we were teenagers, forever impecunious, and thus forever incapable of completely filling the tank. Inevitably a moment would come when we would be a few miles from home and the motor would die. 

‘Bloody ‘ell, we just put a fiver in the tank, gotta be impossible that it’s run out already’. 

No, it wasn’t impossible, and it most definitely had run out. Hopefully, there would be petrol in the jerrycan, but all too often its contents had already been poured into the tank with the thought that it would get us a few more miles, and so wearily we’d walk back to town with the empty can. It held four and a half gallons, which is a heavy load to carry a couple of hundred yards, let alone a mile or two. Or three or four. So it was rarely filled to the top on those occasions when it had to be carried a distance. More like just a couple of gallons. So we learned, quite quickly, that a couple of gallons did not take the Champ very far. Pour the liquid into the tank and drive to the nearest petrol station and spend the last of our rapidly shrinking budget. Offerings, oblations, sacrifices to the Champ god, the merciless eternally thirsty Champ god who devoured all. Again and again and again.

Adventures abounded, good ones and bad ones. There was always a balancing factor … the more fun on an outing, the more likely a disaster would occur. There was the time we went to Porlock, and while maneuvering in a parking lot, we managed to reverse over a stanchion, a length of pipe set in concrete in a five-gallon barrel, part of an abandoned boundary marker that once upon a time had help up a chain or a rope. The barrel flipped and the pipe jammed itself between the prop shaft and the transmission tunnel. Or maybe it got stuck between the shaft from the transmission to the rear axle and the shaft from the rear axle to the front one. It’s been so long since I was under a Champ that exactly just where it was stuck, I cannot remember. Doesn’t matter anyway. What did matter was that the only way to free the vehicle was to cut the pipe, and we were too poor and certainly too cheap to call for help. All we had for a tool was a small broken hacksaw blade - one of those little itty bitty blades, about a quarter of an inch wide. And it was broken - so the length was about three or four inches, and the pipe was probably an inch and a half. So it’s fairly easy to imagine the fun we had, lying on our backs, taking turns to cut through this wretched pipe. It took all afternoon, but finally, we cut through it and freed the vehicle, and drove home. Brad had a call a week or so later from the indignant owner of the parking lot - someone had written down the registration number and given it to him. He wanted to be paid for the damage … 

Later that summer, Brad moved into a tent up on North Hill, down the bottom of a steep track, overlooking the Bristol Channel, away from the world. It was the summer of love, and thus a perfectly normal thing to do. One rainy night he was awakened by the sound of spinning tires, so he exited the tent to investigate. It was a police car, hopelessly stuck. The embarrassed cop mumbled something about ‘just looking around …’ but rapidly had to admit that he was checking on Brad, and ‘no, he hadn’t done anything, wrong, no, not at all, the sergeant asked me to see what was going on here, and of course, I can see that you are just camping. I really hate to have to ask, but I am just wondering if you might just be able to give me a tow up this hill? You know, with that army car of yours?’

Another night a friend said he had to get down to Cornwall, and asked if we could drive him down there - he’d pay for the petrol. It was miles away, near Liskeard or someplace, but it was an adventure, and he was paying, and so off we went, presciently taking our sleeping bags along. We delivered him and started back.

Miles driven in a Champ, just like in an old jeep or ancient Land Rover, are long miles, long tiring aching arm miles, red-rimmed eye miles, and about halfway home, we heard a very loud ping from the engine. We pulled over and popped the bonnet, aiming a wavering and blinking yellow-beamed flashlight into the engine compartment. Nothing untoward was apparent. We drove on and ten minutes later the sound repeated. Again we investigated, and this time noticed two small bolts missing from where the fan mounted to the water pump. 

The excitement of the adventure started to fade, and that familiar old car owner paranoia settled in. Neither of us were mechanics, we had no tools to speak of, and very little money. And it was dark and it was very late and we were exhausted. We drove into a little town and found a bus shelter to spend the night in. We could examine the vehicle come dawn when it was light enough to figure out what was going on. 

The sixties was a time of drug exploration, grass and hash, leapers and sleepers, uppers and downers, and of course psychedelics. I had some heavy-duty sleeping pills with me, Mandrax, and we took a couple each, figuring that they would ensure a few hours of deep sleep, and hopefully and simultaneously soften the wooden benches. We probably had not been asleep more than half an hour when we were awoken by the police. Well, that’s not entirely true. We were roused, and our eyes opened, and then closed again. Awake we were not, but then we weren’t really asleep either. We were very very stoned, which was what Mandies were all about. You took ‘em and stayed awake, and became, well, let’s not put too fine a spin upon it, rather stupid, but in a strangely pleasant way. 

Back then the cops just did not like strangers stretching out to sleep in the great outdoors. The Vagrancy Act and all that. The sixties had seen Kerouac’s rucksack revolution come to life in the UK. Beatniks, and later hippies, hitch-hiked the roads country-wide, rucksacks or bindles on their backs, sleeping in fields, bus shelters, and beaches. This sense of freedom, this cocking-the-snook at conventions greatly offended Mr. Plod, and unsurprisingly these close-shaven, short back-and-sides upholders of all that was decent, took umbrage. Huge great swathes of umbrage. And it goes without saying that they more than frowned upon drugs.

Thus a wee-wee hours interrogation ensued. Who are you, what is your name, question after question, and we just wanted to sleep. Our incoherence confused and bothered them, and so we were bundled into the back of a police car and taken to the station. There was no way we would even dream of telling them, hey, look officers, we’re just done a couple of Mandies, no way at all. So there we were in the police station, being interrogated one at a time, with no story to tell other than the completely true one that we had taken a friend to Cornwall, and were too tired to continue all the way home and that something strange had happened to the engine, and, oh, I’m sorry officer, but I’m so tired, and just got to close my eyes a bit and no sir! You can’t go to sleep here, I want you to answer some more questions .. and so this ludicrous situation went on for hours. Come six in the morning they gave up, realizing that we were simply two tired kids trying to get home, and they gave us tea, and then drove us back to the shelter and the Champ. We made it home after a few hours with no more mishaps and replaced the bolts in the fan. Just why they had flown off was anyone’s guess.

Writing this reminded me of a vaguely similar encounter I had had with the police some years before when I was around seventeen, and living in Winchester with my parents. I had been to a party in Stockbridge with a girlfriend. We had an argument, and I left the party around midnight to hitch the eight miles home. After walking through dark and deserted country roads a couple of miles with no rides, I saw a barn just inside a gate, and by then, being thoroughly tired, and probably still a bit drunk, I thought I’d go inside and sleep until dawn. 

The night was pitch black and silent. It seemed I was in the middle of nowhere. I rounded the corner of the barn feeling for the way in and walked through a wide opening. In an instant, I was blinded by powerful lights and the crackle of radios, and about five policemen appeared out of the gloom. I could see a police car and motor-cycles in the barn.

‘What are you doing here’ was the immediate question. I had spent that summer hitching around the West Country and knew that the law frowned upon sleeping out, the Vagrancy Act once again. So I made up a stupid cock-n-bull story about meeting someone here who was going to give me a ride home. A really asinine, feeble-minded, hare-brained, derisible story. ‘Empty your pockets’ was the next order. I smoked roll-your-owns back then. They always went out, so you needed to carry matches. I pulled out four or five books of matches from my pockets. Without another word, they bundled me into the police car and drove me to Andover Police Station. 

Turned out there had been a spate of arson in the area, and the police had had a tip that this particular barn was going to be burnt down that evening. So it was all rather incriminating. Doggedly I stuck to my featherheaded story, hour after hour until the cops finally, and certainly regretfully, came to the conclusion that one, I wasn’t the arsonist, and two, I was probably far too stupid to even consider the idea, and thus convinced that they could not pin the crimes on me, they drove me home. So at least I got a ride. All the way to the front door.

Minehead was a tourist town, buzzing in the summer and dead in the winter. The season and the off-season. Permanent jobs were hard to find. Brad and I dreamed of starting a bookshop, selling poetry, avant-garde literature, all the stuff that dreams were made of. Our complete lack of funds and lack of knowledge of the book trade only made the dream more chimerical. We registered a trademark, Blue Mountain Books, and looked for premises. I saw a job opening at the local library, and it was like a telegram from the gods: here is where I can quickly learn about books! 

I went for an interview and got the job. I heard months later, through Brad, whose mother knew someone on the interview board but did not know it was I being interviewed, that a young man had been before the board seeking a job who had told them that he had General Certificates of Education in many subjects but had never produced them for scrutiny. The young man of course, was me. It had never occurred to me you had to show these things to get a job. In fact, I had never bothered to collect them from school when I had left. I suppose I just figured that whoever wanted to check on those kind of things just made a phone call or something. And as it happens, I never did get any certificates for exams I had passed. I naively thought my word was enough and this was the only time anyone ever asked me about them. So much for a classical education.

The library job was, truth to tell, extremely boring. Tedious, humdrum, monotonous … an entire Roget’s Thesaurus’ worth of boring. The clientele was for the most part equally insipid, other than the odd times a drunk might wander in, or someone with a mental affliction. I would watch the senior staff try to deal with these disturbances with a wry smile. What is the Dewey classification for a loony?

However, the library did turn up one book which changed things a bit. A slim tome entitled ‘Half-Safe - Across the Atlantic by Jeep'’ written by an Australian, Ben Carlin.

When Carlin was in India, just after the war, he had seen an amphibious jeep, and remarked to a colleague, 'You know, Mac, with a bit of titivation, you could go around the world in one of these things'.

'Half-Safe', published in 1955, was the story of how, in 1947, he had purchased an amphibious jeep in the USA, and sailed it across the Atlantic, up Africa, through Europe, across the Channel and finally arrived in London. 

It is a tale of dogged ingenuity, of a relentless and an unflagging battle against almost insurmountable odds, and is ultimately a testament to the lengths a jeep lunatic will travel, in order to prove to the world that jeeps will go anywhere. 

Even across the Atlantic.   

Ben Carlin's story of crossing the Atlantic in an amphibious jeep

After two weeks or so of wandering the shelves at Minehead Public Library, the Head Librarian, a slight and kind man named Mr. Perks, who wore half-moon glasses perched upon the tip of his nose … perfect positioning for looking down and reading … became convinced that it was my destiny to pursue a lifelong career in the library, and that accordingly I should seek a course at Bristol University and pursue a degree that would propel me to undreamt of heights of proficiency and expertise in the library world.

I was horrified by his belief in me. This was not something I had anticipated in my dream of opening Blue Mountain Books, the future stronghold of  bohemian culture in West Somerset. Not at all. The idea of going to university had never occurred to me, and while I did truly have a love of books, that romance was far removed from studying library practice, and most certainly and indubitably did not lend itself to a lifetime of being closeted within four walls, no matter how many books those walls enclosed. 

As I hemmed and hawed over the following few days, trying to avoid the subject, I was accosted again by Mr Perks, peering over his specs.’ ‘Er Bob, I’ve been hearing a rumor around town … ‘er, well, something about you and a bookshop? Did I hear wrong? Is this something you are considering?’ 

Oh jeez, if the cat was not out of the bag, it was wriggling about pretty energetically. I affected great surprise, and pumped Mr Perks for details. ‘A bookshop? Wow. Me opening a bookshop? Heck. Don’t see how I could do that, who told you that?’ And proceeded to tell him the truth about my financial situation, which was probably the first really truthful thing I had uttered so far, other than the very real existence of my exam certificates … about which I had still not yet been challenged. ‘I don’t have the money to open a box, Mr Perks, let alone a bookshop. How weird that this rumor is going around. Kinda hilarious really.’

Recounting all of this to Brad that evening, he replied with the news that the call he had put in to Penguin Books the week before, from his landladies’ telephone, had been returned by a Mr. O’Nions, Penguin’s area rep. He wanted to set up an appointment with us. We were torn between telling him that it was all a ghastly mistake and on the other hand, a reluctance to abandoning our dream of a bohemian stronghold. 

So, wisely, we did nothing. Every few days at the library, the possibility of a new bookshop opening in Minehead was brought up by one of the customers. It seemed the rumor mill was in overdrive around the town. And every few days Brad’s landlady would catch him in the hall and tell ‘That Mr O’Nions called again yesterday … won’t you give him a call. He sounds like such a nice man.’ Of course he sounded like a nice man, he was an unrelenting salesman, it was his job to sound like a nice man. 

Every day added one more plate to the now tottering stack we were attempting to juggle, and within four weeks of starting the library job, I handed in my notice. Living a lie takes far too much energy.

So the dream of opening Blue Mountain Books ended, not so much having turned into a nightmare but really and simply because we both woke up to what is known as reality. However, we retained a little proof that the entire episode had not been a figment of our imaginations. We still had the registered trademark from the Board of Trade.

Two major things happened that summer … I met a beautiful blue-eyed blond named Wendy, and by year's end bought the Champ from Brad.

As this story is really about my affinity for jeeps and all their witchery, I won’t go into detail about the other jobs I held during the waning months of 1966 going into 1967 other than to say I took a job at Butlin’s Holiday Camp the following spring.

Wendy and I got married at the Registry Office in Williton. I was 20, she was 18. With the naivety of youth, I had no idea one had to pay to get married, and at the end for the ceremony, I had to bum seven shillings and sixpence from Wendy’s uncle. After the exchange of the vows and the payment for the license, I proudly escorted my bride to the Champ for the eight mile drive to the reception in Minehead. We probably had not gone a mile before I heard the thump thump of a flat tire. The Champ’s tires were 750 x 16’s …. Big and heavy. Fortunately we were close to a lay-by when it occurred; a circumstance that shielded me from the danger of attempting to change the wheel on the very busy main road, which afforded no pavement or sidewalk … just dense hedges on each side of the road. By the time the lug nuts were tightened and the jack lowered, and the flat tire attached to the spare-wheel carrier at the back of the vehicle, my wedding suit was splattered with red mud and grease. It was an auspicious start to our life together, and while my appearance at the reception perhaps did not draw audible gasps from the attendees, I was certainly aware of a plain and indisputable disdain among some of the elderly relatives. 

Wendy and I had taken over the flat that Brad and I had been sharing, and we played host to friends from around the country who would come and stay for a weekend. Among the earlier visitors the next summer were Andrew Collins and Johnny Guy from London, two old school friends. I didn’t have to go into Butlin’s until 11.30 on a Sunday morning, so I proposed a quick trip in the Champ before work. We drove out to Dunster, through the village and took a left down a small lane which led to a ford over the River Avill. I’d been across the ford several times … it was just a few inches deep with a very firm bottom, and the cool thing about it was that it was quite wide, probably about 40 feet. And because of the shallowness of the water, and the firm gravel river bed, it was not a place that one even thought about needing to engage four wheel drive.

It is a pretty crossing, and centuries ago a bridge was built across the river. It was known as a pack-horse bridge, and I had always wondered why, given the shallow crossing, a bridge was needed for pack-horses. Certainly the bridge was perfect for hikers and ramblers … it kept their feet dry no matter the season. 

We approached the water and John and Andrew giggled in anticipation. There was a family crossing the bridge, a couple with three children including a rather bored looking teenager. They stopped to watch our progress as I drove through the river at about ten miles an hour, not wanting to soak our audience, and then, when we about three quarters of the way across, a totally and absolutely unexpected and unforeseen thing happened. 

The Champ plunged down at forty five degrees, the hood disappearing under the water. The river flowed across the Champ, over my knees. 

‘Jesus Bob! The engine is completely under water,’ shouted Andrew who was in the passenger seat, getting just as wet. I reached for the four wheel drive lever, and hit the gas. The front end sank a little lower, but the champ didn’t move forwards. I threw it into reverse, and the rear end sank a little lower. 

Two more hikers had joined the family on the bridge. ‘Put it into four wheel drive,’ one of them helpfully shouted. The other made a comment about the huge rain storm that had occurred a few days ago, a rainstorm that I now remembered. Indeed, it had rained, very hard, for a couple of days,

But surely not enough to carve such a deep channel in the river bed? I glanced at the pack horse bridge, and the reason for its creation now became starkly apparent.

The Champ had been designed by the Army to be capable of deep fording, and indeed the manual, at the foot of every page, carried a quotation to the effect of ‘Regular Servicing is Essential for Successful Fording’. I had read it many times, but had not really absorbed its import. Everything about the Champ was heavy duty. The distributor and ignition wires, to take just one example, were so well designed to keep the water out that it really was a time-consuming task to remove them to change the points or plugs. And there were little caps that one was supposed to screw over the breather holes on items like the generator prior to deep fording. The floors in the driver and passenger compartments had large holes in them to expedite the fast drainage of any water that entered the vehicle. In this situation they greatly helped in filling up the vehicle. With a nod to the Champ’s utilitarian design, both front compartments had wooden duckboards on the floor. No cissy rubber floor mats for the army. Being wood they wanted to float, so Andrew and I had to push down hard with our feet to keep them in place and stop them from floating down the river. And, ah yes, the river. The river which was flowing over the tops of our thighs, streaming and purling across the car. The intake for the air cleaner was situated on the side of the cowl, high up, but not quite out of reach of the rippling water, which every now and then splashed into the intake and the engine would murmur, and miss once or twice, and then pick up again. 

The crowd on the bridge had by now doubled, the two children beside themselves with delight, and the teenager was now watching the proceedings with a rather malicious grin. He had brightened up considerably. This was more like it. 

We had been there for probably fifteen minutes, with the engine totally submerged, the exhaust pipe underwater, gurgling and bubbling, and I watched the gauges with worry and dread. A remarkable thing was taking place. Despite the engine being underwater, the temperature was rising, alarmingly. I remembered reading in the manual that there was some kind of clutch on the water pump that disengaged when the fan encountered deep water. Evidently the cold rushing waters of the Avill were no match for the heat this engine put out; a heat  that was being absorbed by a now stationary water jacket.

Each time I attempted to drive our way out the deeper we sank. We were stuck, inextricably stuck. Something had to be done. John volunteered to go for help, to see if he could find a farmer with a tractor, or someone with a Land Rover to pull us out. Looking behind him at about thirty feet of water to cross as opposed to about ten in front, he clambered around the windshield and paddled down the hood, pushing off with a determined leap. 

In hindsight, this turned out to be a bad move. 

He landed about three feet in front of the Champ, up to his chest in the river. Obviously the flood channel was a bit wider than we had thought. A huge roar of appreciation went up from the bridge - this was better than the movies. Grimly he made the shore and jogged to the bridge, making his way through the now ecstatic crowd, who parted to allow this dripping wet lunatic to pass through, giving him enough room on the narrow bridge to avoid his brushing up against their nice clean hiking clothes. Andrew and I turned in our seats, all the while stamping down on the wretched duck boards, and watched him disappear up the lane. 

We had now been there for over thirty minutes, and other than the worrisome temperature situation, our predicament kind of stabilized. A few members of the crowd departed, their places taken by newcomers, who either emerged from the forest in front of us, or from Dunster behind us.  They were promptly briefed on the state of affairs by our long-term fans, the original family, who by now had turned their walk into an impromptu packhorse bridge picnic. Munching on sandwiches and biscuits, they gestured knowingly at Andrew and I, smiling and laughing, and the newcomers, smitten with this new-found camaraderie, smiled and laughed also, and accepted a biscuit or two. 

Still no sign of John and help. We should have been at the point of our little outing when it was time to turn around and go home. I was supposed to be at work within the hour. Instead we were stuck in a fast flowing river, a very cold fast flowing river.

The exhaust made a different gurgle, the engine missed a couple of times, ran smoothly, but briefly, and then died.  Andrew and I looked at one another. 

The crowd was beside itself with joy.  ‘Abandon Ship’, ‘Get out before you are washed into the Bristol Channel’ and other cheerful and merry exhortations. The teenager was laughing so much he began to choke on his sandwich, and his mother started to bang on his back.

Water was obviously rushing down the now silent exhaust pipe … frantic, and sick with that worry that only reckless four-wheelers experience, having vainly attempted a maneuver that turned out to not only be impossible, but simultaneously impossibly expensive, I reached for the ignition key and turned it. The motor turned, slowly, and then faster and then miracle of miracles, marvel of marvels, the engine fired, stumbled a turn or two, and then roared back to life. 

The crowd’s reaction was mixed … Some cheered, but others, those with characters that leant more towards a negative view of the world, booed.

And then some in the crowd pointed behind us, and joy of joys, there was a tractor, driven by a ruddy-faced man in a tattered tweed jacket and a tweed cap, with John standing on the draw bar behind him. 

Salvation! 

John walked across the ford towards us, carrying the chain, and attached to the Champ’s pintle hook which was still above water, and then returned to the tractor, which in the meantime had turned around, and fastened the other end of the chain to the drawbar.  Giving us the thumbs up, the farmer slowly took up the slack in the chain and pulled. We started to move, slowly but easily, and a moment or two later we were out of the water. 

The crowd dispersed, sated. All in all, it had been a jolly good Sunday morning so far.

Turning down our offer of a couple of pounds for his trouble, the farmer laughed and said it was all in a day's work, it had only taken a few minutes, and not to worry about it. He hadn’t got wet, that was the main thing, he chuckled. Of course, that is the thing about farmers and farming. I learnt this truth a few years later, when I was farming on the Brendon Hills. Every day presents an unforeseen problem, a dilemma, an undreamt of difficulty. Indeed farming itself is really a massive collection of messes, imbroglios and quandaries, endless strings of them that have to be met head on, one after the other. Each has to be analyzed and resolved, and then it’s on to the next one. I guess if one is able to stay dry, that is at least one predicament avoided.

I drove the Champ back to our flat. It misfired, ran on two, three then four, then back to two again, and so on. We got home, changed into dry clothes, and I headed off to work at Butlin’s, the Champ stuttering and misfiring all the way.

Got there half an hour late for work. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ I mumbled to the boss, ‘Bit of mechanical trouble.’

The Champ never ran well after this. It might run well for three or four hundred miles, and then would start misfiring again. I put it down to the fact that as well engineered and waterproofed as it was, once water did get in it was very hard, if not impossible, to get it out again. I removed the distributor cap and ignition wires and put them in the oven to dry out but to no avail.

By mid-summer I had had enough of Butlin’s and the stress and madness of the job. I was 21 and was Chief Cashier, responsible for all the money that came into the camp. In peak weeks the camp held about ten thousand holidaymakers (known as campers) and about three thousand workers. All the money that was taken in on the camp ended up being counted, balanced and banked from my department. We ran two shifts a day, and no one could leave the office at the end of the night shift until everything was balanced. It was a ridiculous job for a 21 year old.

So I gave in my notice, and headed out in the Champ for a few days to clear my head, and ended up in London at Island Records, and got my old job back, found a flat in Hemel Hempstead, and brought Wendy and my two children, Mandy and Andrew up to Hemel to start our new life.

The Island job came with a company car, and I sold the Champ. It had been fun, but it was too complicated for my very limited mechanical knowledge.

And it was running like shit anyway.