Rover and Beyond

Earlier this month, I wondered why a military green, heavy duty, army tough-case had appeared one day on the floor in the kitchen. It seems that, in order not to freeze our little socks off when we go overnighting somewhere really cold, even though we bought the thermal inner tent for extra insulation, inside our Vickywood roof tent, we need something diesel-powered to warm us up and – because we…

Lisa gets asked regularly by the locals: “Is it safe, having the steering wheel on the wrong side?” She always likes to confirm that “Right is right,” as far as we’re concerned. Having both learnt to drive in England, as teens in the nineties, as well as having regularly gone skiing in Europe throughout the entirety of our adult lives before we moved to Switzerland, we can both drive on both…

“And what is in Augsburg?” I hear you ask. Well, about half way up the district (one of the Bundeslände) of Augsburg lies Gersthofen, a town that welcomes one of the ever growing number of excellent quality, European roof tent manufacturers; in this case Vickywood. And what were we doing there? We were at the roof tent manufacturer’s season opening, to pick up a roof tent for Lenny. In our…

So, after much deliberation and considerable procrastination, this summer, we are embarking on an arguably quite irresponsible, enourmously long, but vastly exciting (for fifty-somethings, anyway) 6000 kilometre, fjord-laden, roof-tent carrying, Lenny the Land Rover powered round trip, from Switzerland to Norway.  The route there. As yet, none exists for the way home. Ominous, much? And will it really only…

Sometimes it pays off, being a member of a global movement that is seldom discussed, almost in a secret club kind of way, made up of a group of engineers, mechanics, agricultural workers, plain old heavy duty car enthusiasts and more. Tea on the tailgate brings such a group together. Today, we were at Sittingbourne, for Tea on the Tailgate – Kent. About thirty Land Rovers turned up. Not bad for…

They say that there isn’t much better than to have the love of a good woman (or man, and everything possible in between, these days). So, to say that I am not routinely amazed by the latest mechanical epiphany Lisa often appears with, well, that would be an understatement. She has an impressive, ever growing toolbox of skills does my wife. They have been developed over the years, as she needed to build or…

In 2013, after a long and careful discussion with Lisa, I took a permanent job with the Swiss electricity grid operator. We had decided to pack up the entire contents of our house in England and move it all, our two kids, Lisa’s horse Daisy and of course her very own Lenny the Land Rover, to the beautiful Alpine state. We would be based in Nordwestschweiz, the north west corner of the country,…

Sometimes, everything falls neatly into place. It’s Sunday, the roads are quiet, the sun is shining, and Lenny is full of fuel. So it’s time to go exploring. Being fifteen minutes from the border with Germany and more specifically the Black Forest, it means that we are lucky enough to have the opportunity of popping across the Rhein, either to take in some of the breathtaking scenery and the…

We are lucky to have a wonderfully active Land Rover community where we are. It’s a large group of every kind of Land Rover enthusiast. There are farmers, there are I.T. guys, there are city slickers, there are (thankfully!) mechanics who love to work on these beautifully (mostly) uncomplicated engines. Most importantly, everyone is a dedicated fan of all things Land Rover, with a subtle but…

Having thrown ourselves along with Lenny the Land Rover, like some kind of extreme off roading experience, right up to our necks in the deep and muddy waters of social media, we now find ourselves pouring over the insights and analytics provided by this really neat social media management tool they call metricool. We have linked all the relevant social media platforms on which we have a presence…

Switzerland is a dream destination for overlanders, offering breathtaking alpine scenery, winding mountain passes, and some of the best off-road routes in Europe.  Switzerland is a dream destination for overlanders, offering breathtaking alpine scenery, winding mountain passes, and some of the best off-road routes in Europe. For Land Rover Defender 90 enthusiasts, the country provides the…