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The Story Behind The Photo...... by Neil Hopkinson

Susan & David in their TD5 Discovery

“Individually but never alone” is the Impala catch phrase that was suggested to us by one of our support crew during the 24Challenge weekends that we used to run at Impala.

As those of you who have adventured with us know, we avoid convoying at all costs. The only times that we do, are deep in the immense forest and challenging bogs of Russia and also when we are working our way through the 200 meter high dunes that sit proud in the middle of Lac Iriki in Morocco.

During our recent adventure travelling the byways and unclassified roads that criss- cross the hills and valleys of The South of England, Louise and I received a phone call from David and Susan (my sister) Linsell in their Discovery Series 2 Td5.

“Hi Neil, we are stuck at WP78 on the track known as Whiteshead Hill and Shipley Bottom”.
I quickly worked out our ETA at twenty minutes and Louise and I headed off from our checkpoint on the other side of Marlborough to affect a rescue.

The sun was shining out of a blue sky as we turned off the main road to start our climb uphill to The Ridgeway and into the valley that would take us to the stuck Discovery.

Twenty minutes after David rang we arrived to find that their car was beached on some deep ruts and both forward and rearward movement was impossible. We found out that my sister and David had been engaged in a “cherry stone” throwing competition, so did not see the ruts deepen until the underside of the Discovery hit the high ground and they came to a halt.

We quickly assessed the situation and manoeuvred my Discovery 2 into position, attached the tow rope and gently pulled Susan and David’s Discovery out of the ruts. A few minutes later after some discussion as to the best way to negotiate the deeper ruts further up the track, we sent them on their way to continue the roadbook “individually but definitely not alone”