Chris Daniells Off-Road Day & RTV

Chris Daniells invited us to one of his Off Road Days in Wiltshire at the end of September. The reasons for us going were two-fold. Firstly was to drive his recently rebuilt Suzuki SJ (featured here) secondly was to see how he runs his off-road days.

Taking your 4x4 off-road in the UK has not been easy over the past few months. With the Foot & Mouth epidemic closing down pretty much all of the countryside and other rights of way. Many Off-Road centres and "pay & Play" sites have also been forced to close for lengthy periods.

Now that conditions are getting back to normal in many areas there have been quite a few 'Play Day' type events where you just turn up in your 4x4, hand over your cash and head off into the muddy stuff. The organisation of these events can be pretty amateur at best and at worst some are just plain dangerous.

We have deliberately not promoted or advertised any of these events in the past for that very reason. It's not unusuall to attend one of these events only to find that the only 'marshalls' are therte to take your money and little else. Driving around an unmarked and often compact site with 50 or 60 other unsupervised vehicles can be a pretty hair raising sight.

That said Chris tries to run his events a little differently. Firstly there is none of the 'Land Rovers Only' or 'Jeeps Only' snobbery that goes on elsewhere. On the day we went vehicles were split pretty evenly between Land Rovers and Suzukis, all enjoying themselves together with no rivalry you can sometimes witness. Marshalling was very good and very strict, they did not put up with any stupid behaviour and were on hand to offer helpful advice to the few novice off roaders.

One of the other main differences with this event was that there were a couple of trade stalls selling all the stuff you either forgot to bring with you or broke when you got there. We thought this was a very good idea as it meant no-one should be stranded at the end of the day with a busted rig.

Catering on site was superb, very good quality and not the usual overpriced rip-offs you usually find.

Finally, in the afternoon, Chris had set up a mini RTV trial that anyone could take part in. It wasn't a huge course but it was technically demanding and a lot of fun - even if it was pouring with rain by this time.

Most of the 4x4s were there all day and nearly all of them went home carrying sods of Wiltshires finest top soil with them. Having seen how the event was run it has given us some good ideas for running our own Off-Road days. Keep an eye out for forthcoming announcements about the Difflock Off-Road Driving Club!