Bog Myrtle & Peat

Country people are renowned for driving enormous cars. It is the definitive statement of rural intent to own a mud spattered 4×4 and fill it with dogs, sticks and sloe gin. Aside from a small urban minority who insist on taking range rovers through the city centre of London, country cars are constantly forced into situations which would make even the boldest car designer wince and hide his face behind a clipboard. Land Rovers are wilfully hurled into impossible situations by drivers who are literally fearless, blinded by the simple belief that a Land Rover can do simply anything. What is so amazing is the fact that they can.

Bogs, forests and rivers slide noiselessly beneath their uncomplaining engines, and a country person’s life is eternally improved by having vehicular access to ninety nine percent of the countryside. What a dream it must be to own a 4×4. As far as I am concerned, the days when I am able to travel in style are still far in the distant future.

The Chayne is accessed by a mile of disappearing farm track. Potholes, divots, man traps and puddles litter the path, and I am increasingly finding that my 1996 Vauxhall Astra “montana” can’t take much more of this bumpy action. A quad bike is available for me to borrow, but once I have loaded the car up with traps, trees, chainsaws, posts, nails, rails, tree guards, sheep netting, shovels and deer carcases, it is more of a hassle to unpack than it is to endure the crunching sound of my exhaust pipe coming off worse in a collision with a rough stacked cairn. A cow itched its bottom on my wing mirror, so that is now sadly absent, and I recently turned the car quickly to get a shot at a calling crow, thumping the steering mechanism onto a boulder. I hit the crow, but now I am confronted with an angry knocking whenever I turn a corner.

Budgetary requirements limit my ability to buy a more appropriate “battle bus”, and as the days grow warmer and warmer, it is less likely that I will have to face snow and ice again, but I can’t help wondering how much easier my life would be if I had a slightly more appropriate means of getting around the farm.