I thought a would give you all a little insight into one of my hobbies! and that is Off Roading. I got into off roading quite by mistake really, it was during a break at Centre Parcs at Elverden Forest that I went on one of their off roading courses. The course was run by an outside contractor a Wild Tracks in Suffolk and was quite expensive at £60 for about 20 minutes driving but I sort of got the bug!
On a second visit to Centre Parcs the following year I decided to have another go at the off roading but instead of booking through Centre Parcs I went straight to Wild Tracks and booked direct, I managed to strick a deal for about an hours tuition for £50 which although not cheap was quite a saving over the previous year, by now I had already bought a Land Rover Discovery to tow our caravan with and was periodically buying Land Rover magazines and this combined with my hours tuition off roading meant that I had really got the bug.
About 6 month later I had managed to save up some money with the intentions of buying an old Land Rover Discovery to take off road and one day I managed to stumble on an Ebay listing for exactly what I was looking for, the auction finished on the monday night and after I lodged my bid I waited with baited breath for the minutes to tick away until the end when I found that I was now the proud owner of a Land Rover Discovery that was Off Road prepared!
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Well time has now flown buy and I have visited many off road sites and Green Lanes, met lots of really good friends and thoroughly enjoyed myself, makes a break from being around Taxis day in and day out.
Around the same time that I bought Egor I was invited to attend an initial meeting to set up a 4x4 Response group, the group was established and a committee voted in that night. At their first meeting, the group decided to co-opt me onto the committee as I had made a few suggestions that they thought could be of use.
Now what is a 4x4 Response group I hear you say? well 4x4 Response groups have been set up around the Country in various forms for several years. The group is made up of volunteers who offer the use of their 4x4 vehicle in adverse weather conditions to the emergency services, hospitals, care agencies, meals on wheels services and any other essential service, basically they offer logistical support to these agencies when their normal mode of transport cannot proceed due to the weather.
The group progressed through the winter and had a couple of call outs but then during the spring the momentum seemed to slow! An AGM was called for July and the where the committee stood down and I was voted in as Chairman, much to my surprise!
Since then with the help of the new committee with have made huge progress and were called out by Kent County Council during the couple of days snow that we had during December, then in January we responded to approx 500 requests for assistance from our user agencies, we performed tasks like transporting nurses to and from work, transporting paramedics to emergency calls, ferrying care workers to their clients, delivering meals on wheels to the elderly and much more.
If you would like to find out more about South East England 4x4 Response please visit the website http://www.southeast4x4response.org.uk/
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