Goodbye Brian!

I got married to Amy at Langley Castle near Hexham  on 1st August 2012 and we used my Land Rover 110 ( built before they came up with the name Defender) who was known as Brian, in tribute to the alcoholic talking dog from Family Guy, as our honeymoon transport. I discovered there were some nice green lanes near the castle but as I was a tiny bit busy on that day I didn't get a chance to explore until nearly a year later.

 

All the lanes are legal to drive, and if I encounter other people then I always wave, say thank you if they step out of the way - and if they are on horseback I switch off and let them pass. I have read stories of furious walkers shouting abuse at people in 4X4's but, touch wood, I have never experienced it.

 

I think possibly it's because they see my lilywhite legs dangling beneath my shorts and feel sorry for them. After all, my legs have to support the rest of me which can't be easy given my predilection for pies of any kind - steak and black pudding from Rothbury is highly recommended!
You can see that Brian was a great vehicle and he took us all over the UK and around France. He only ever failed to start twice, once in a McDonalds car park and the other time in a layby next to a catering van. The RAC fixed him both times and I thanked them with a burger! Amy said that when we went on holiday in him, it was like taking a bit of home with us.
Not long after this picture was taken my wife opened the upstairs curtains and asked me where I had parked Brian. I had left him right outside our house, and being bright red with a union flag on the side, he shouldn't have been hard to see! But he was hard to see because somebody else obviously thought he was great too and had stolen him during the night. All that remained was an oil stain on the road. We were going away for a weekend in Scarborough and I had packed things like tools, brollies, picnic chairs, kites, binoculars etc so all that was gone too. It wasn't the same doing the trip in my wife's rusty 13 year old Fiesta, I can tell you! I had planned to keep him forever and I still miss him to this day.

I really want another Defender but apparently once you've had one stolen the thieves keep checking to see if you buy another one, then take that too! So I decided to wait long enough for some bad karma to happen to them- I really do believe you get what you deserve- before I looked for Brian 2, the sequel. 

I was going to write about green laning but I am running out of time so I will leave you with a photo showing me and Brian tackling a river that was almost 3 inches deep! You really can go anywhere in a Land Rover!