It's 2023! turner's torque

I know officially it was last month too, but we decided The Mud Life's 2023 would start in February because we needed to take a break.....well I say we, but actually Muddy Madam threatened to make me a eunuch if she had to put a magazine together over Christmas and New Year again.

To be fair there have been a couple of years that she has still been finishing the mag way into wee small hours of New Year's Eve, so to save my marriage AND my crown jewels I gave in.

In the past 5 years, with just two of us at the helm, creating a 100+ page magazine every month can take its toll. Add other jobs, general life and the occasional hobby to the mix and the fact that we’ve produced the last 45 issues alone is quite a feat.

Anyhow, we’re back!

As you may have noticed from social media, and our front cover, during January I was invited on stage two of the global media launch of the INEOS Grenadier from Inverness down to Loch Lomond. Now, I know there’ll be a lot of you who feel let down by INEOS - the move to France and so on - but my job is to write about the vehicle, not Jim’s business decisions, and what a 4x4 him and his team have produced The Grenadier is a no-nonsense 4x4 that’s built to work hard, and last.

In other news, it was a lovely surprise on the 10th December waking up to snow, I honestly can’t remember the last time in snowed this early in Bolton, it must be decades. After walking Lilly in the park my first thought was to drive up to the hills for a play in Deux Smurf, but a quick drive to the post office to drop off a parcel completely put me off the idea, as the entire population of Bolton were out on the road and driving at 10mph. By the time I’d have reached the moors the snow would have melted.

There was one noticeable difference this year at Muddy Towers, and that was we didn’t have a press car to play with - sorry, review. The reason for this was that I really did need to drive Deux Smurf more, it doesn’t do cars any good just sat parked up for long periods of time, especially when the weather is so damp and miserable.

The OSRAM VX1000 light bar I wrote about last month remains unbelievably good, and I’m always surprised how quickly the heater on Deux Smurf warms up after a -10º night, I’m toasty warm in a matter of minutes, it’s exceptionally good for a 27 year old 4x4.

I’m currently writing a list of all the shows that I want to attend this year, there are quite a lot, and next month we have both the Caravan and Camping Show at the NEC, but more importantly, 4x4 Expo at the Stafford Show Ground on the 26th Feb. We won’t have a stand at 4x4 Expo, but I’ll hopefully see some of you there.