Tyne Valley Green Lanes in a Discovery

For some reason, when I was in the police I used to like to put the marked up Defender into low ratio first gear, then jump out and run around the vehicle as it was lumbering along, then jump back in again. This would impress any passengers who had never been in a land rover before, unless I had the misfortune to slip and fall over, then my desperate attempts to get up and back into the driver's seat were more amusing than thrilling. I think the point of view of the above photo just reminded me of those far off times - I can assure you the Discovery was stationary. If I kneel down these days it's not an easy task to become upright again and I am almost deafened by the clicking from my left knee.

It was a fine day so my friend Neil and I met up to explore some green lanes in the Tyne valley, west of Hexham. I made sure Skye had an extra soft bed in the back just in case it got very bouncy and I could tell from the look in her eye she appreciated it. It was the same look she gives when we give her treats or let her leap in a river. In fact she will dive into any body of water but show her the bath tub and it's a completely different story! She drops to the floor and goes totally limp making it very hard to pick her up. I wonder how she knows to do that?

Green lanes are public byways and your vehicle needs to be road legal to use them. Some of them are very easy, others quite challenging. We drove a few and they were mainly fairly smooth tracks, I never needed low ratio, in fact after climbing one quite steep track we came across a bungalow with great views, and there was a Nissan Micra parked outside. I felt a bit silly driving my rather large wheeled 4X4  Discovery but then I remembered some of the other places I'd been to where the Micra would have no chance and felt a bit better. 

At one spot by some old mine workings, Skye managed to train me to jump on some rocks and balance there. She had to lean on my leg or I would have fallen over, which is exactly what I did when she got bored 10 seconds later. We continued our journey and both Neil and I nearly jumped out of our skins when a C130 Hercules flew right over us at zero feet - I thought it was going to rip the flag off the aerial. It was even lower than the American ones we had seen at Arromanches!

It doesn't look very low in my photo, but I was slow getting the camera out - trust me, it was low!
We continued on, travelling cross country through fields and even somewhere that could have been the African Serengeti except I'm not sure they have Highland Coo's there.

    
 Neil and I managed to persuade Skye not to bark at this proud mother, and she in turn didn't gore us to death for getting too near her baby! They were really beautiful animals and it was all the nicer because we had not been expecting to see them here.
Eventually it was time to head for home happy in the knowledge that Lurch hadn't let us down, and as we drove I appreciated having a vehicle that can go most places off road, yet cruise at 70mph on the motorway.