BE OUR GUEST - Brad Unwin

Damian's mutterings are good, but we have decided that you wouldn't mind reading the compositions from other people every now and then, so let's welcome ATUK director, Brad Unwin to the pages of The Mud Life.

A DAY IN THE LIFE... of 3 ATUK directors

People may wonder what we get up to as directors of All Terrain UK, in fact they may wonder if we do anything at times!

The truth is that most days the three of us communicate with each other and with other members of the team. Sometimes we are simply socialising, other times we are discussing policies and the like, or thrashing through decisions regarding how the organisation is run.

We do all of this because we are passionate about green laning and the fact that we want our organisation to be as good as it possibly can be, given the constraints that we exist in.

We all have definite strengths and weaknesses but together we have created a well-run and effective organisation with our members at the centre of it.

It may come as a surprise how many hours running an organisation takes on top of our working life, plus family and 'normal life', and how it (for us at least) has become the 'norm'.

The day that I want to talk about now is not our usual day... On a bright Saturday morning we met with key members of the team running the Big Weekend Event over breakfast at a local supermarket.

We all have points to raise and questions to ask, so there was about two hours taken on this.

After breakfast we drove to the camping site location where the big event will be run from; some of the team hadn’t been there yet and a site visit was needed with the owners.

Accepting a large group is a big ask for a campsite to accommodate, but they were positive and appreciated our organisation. We have taken into account things like nearest shops, pubs, fuel stations, tourist attractions and even arranged a discount for activities on-site such as archery for example.

Saturday morning done we say our cheerio’s, and Darren and I drive to a track about 7 miles away that is under threat of closure due to irresponsible use.

We are trying to evaluate what (if anything) we can do as an organisation. Things are made a little more complicated because of the various agencies involved and a SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest).

Once the site survey was complete we headed off for our last appointment of the day, meeting up with Brad (our third director), so that we can attempt to film some footage for the fantastic Jennifer Hirst to work her magic on and create a video that we can publish for all to see via our All Terrain UK YouTube channel.

The idea was simple, create some footage explaining more about All Terrain UK and what we are about.

We met at a pre-determined location that we knew was an interesting location with a narrow bridge and wide hedge lined track leading up to it. We placed the vehicle in a good spot then proceeded to find out exactly how hard it is to film anything outside.

The first problem was wind, lots of it arriving at exactly the wrong time. There was little wind while setting up, only to start howling the minute we tried to talk - we discovered those fluffy mic covers don’t really work as advertised!

After two wind blasted attempts a decision was made to switch to location B, which in reality involved driving about a mile along the track to a fairly deep wooded section that created a fantastic windbreak. It was not without its drawbacks, as we could now hear birds, planes, the occasional chainsaw, motorcyclists riding past and a member of the 'crew' munching on his crisps!

The second revelation was that to create a video you need a plan, so, instead of mumbling amongst ourselves and not really knowing where this was going, we should have been working off a script/storyboard of some kind.

Again everything is a learning process, and after a fair amount of faff we decided that I would get asked a question then respond with an answer - simple!

Well that’s how I felt, often forgetting the question or fluffing my lines, even the ability to speak was lost at times!

To cut a long story short we took lots of footage, some spoken and some from a drone, we then bundled it up in a big, disorganised mess and Jennifer proceeded to make it into the fabulous film that is now on our YouTube channel.

We finished the day with a (non-alcoholic) drink in a local pub, and discussed the day, ATUK and life in general, so that’s what happened in the day in the life of three ATUK directors.

You can watch our efforts in our ATUK 2022 video here - https://youtu.be/BmZ1t9GkB00, and you can see the Bloopers video here - https://youtu.be/Tg2tMApnqSw.

Learn more about the Big Weekend Event here - https://fb.me/e/1a3XkfwAU.