Any excuse, really…
It was the week between Christmas and New Year when, if you don’t work the festive period, you tend to lose track of days, time and pretty much everything. Luckily, apart from the obvious family stuff to attend to, I had something else to look forward to, and that was a day out green-laning with a friend and motoring writer colleague from the Yorkshire Post, Andy who just happened to have the latest Mercedes-Benz X-CLass pick up on loan. Armed with a list of green-lanes that I’d researched on GLASS’ TrailWise 2 and loaded into my iPhone via the ViewRanger app, I jumped into Deux Smurf, our 1996 Toyota Surf with a flask of coffee and some turkey butties and began the hours drive over to Settle to meet up with Andy. According to the map, our first lane is just after Outhgill on the B6259, and is an hour's drive from Settle, unless you’re following a motoring writer who knows these roads like the
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THE MUD LIFE MAGAZINE
back of his hand and drives a 3.0ltr V6 pick-up with 255bhp on tap, then it's alot quicker! My plan was to reach NY7702-01 (TrailWise 2 reference) which was the northern most lane and head back south down towards Hawes. Starting from the southern end of NY7702-01, the going was firm with a solid stone base and runs almost parallel with the River Edan with stunning views of the towering Great Shunner Fell to our right. At this point I was happy to trundle along in 2wd high, gradually though the ground becomes softer and develops into single muddy ruts, so it was time to press the 4wd button as I don’t want to make a mess by spinning the rear wheels. As the lane turns to the left the ruts become a little bit
