Annie and I meet snow

A light dusting of snow

It’s been quite a while since I wrote about Annie because, for the most part, she’s been extremely well behaved, happily carrying us from A to B and back again, trundling along without a care in the world. All through the lovely long hot sunny weather last year, she never put a wheel wrong, passed yet another MOT without issue and basked in admiring glances wherever she went.

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There be Bronze in that there Rubble Heap

One of my rescued Bronze Fennel seedlings.

If there is one thing guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of a Land Rover owners partner, it is the words ‘We need to bleed the brakes!’ and it was those words that Mud uttered yesterday! My heart sank because bleeding the brakes of a series Land Rover is never easy, is never a quick job, always involves much cursing and swearing and invariably results in mutterings about rusted bleed nipples, located in nigh on impossible to reach places, due to the nonsensical design whims of the Land Rover engineers of by-gone days.

A wander along the wetlands

Humber Bridge from the river bank walk

Back in February we decided to SORN Annie (our Series 3 Land Rover) because she needed some substantial work doing to her brakes and Mud, who isn’t getting any younger you know, decided that trying to get her ready for an MOT (annual road worthiness test in the UK), in mid winter with only the hard gravel drive available to work on, was something he simply couldn’t face …… especially when getting her through the MOT meant sorting the aforementioned brakes out, a bad enough job with a warm, dry workshop at your disposal, never mind sub-zero temperatures, rain and a gravel drive. So we declared her off road, parked her up on the drive and left her there for six months, with Mud regularly idling her on the drive to keep everything lubricated in the engine.

After the famine comes the …. er … feast?

Our new garden feature

Back in December 2009, with the Jap’ pick up, Thomas, aging fast and the cost of maintenance and repairs of said vehicle escalating at a rather alarming rate, Muds’ Land Roverless status reached breaking point and he set about persuading me that an old, battered classic Land Rover was the only sensible solution to our vehicular needs. The ease with which he could repair it, the much lower cost of these repairs, minimal historic vehicle insurance costs, not forgetting the taxed exempt status of such a vehicle, were all tools used to persuade me that a Series land Rover project was the way forward and I fell for it!

A Bonnie addition to the garden

Not exactly what I had in mind when I said we needed more colour in the garden

Remember the story of Jack and the beanstalk and in particular the part where his mother, in a fit of disgust at her sons apparent gullibility, scatters the magic beans on the ground and next morning an enormous beanstalk has grown? Well something similar appears to have occurred in my garden overnight but instead of a handy giant beanstalk, my garden sprouted Land Rover panels …… banana yellow, Land Rover panels to be precise.

Introducing Bonnie

Bonnie, our Series 1, Land Rover, 80″

Well here she is, the latest addition to our Land Rover fleet and she is a Series one, 80 inch. Eldest Mudlets’ reaction to the picture emailed to her was “I hope somebody paid you to take her away” but to be fair to this poor battered little car, she has been used as a trialler and, as a result, has a few more dings and dents than you would expect. However Mud is confident that a few gentle taps here and there with a mallet will straighten out the worst of them, although the rear tub will need a touch more work, as it is currently in two halves.

Engines and flowers

A purple splash along the back fence

These days there are two types of jobs to be done on my series 3 Land Rover, Annie. There are those in the areas Mud has already been through/worked on, so any seized nuts and bolts have already been cursed at, hit with a hammer, beaten into submission with a mallet and generally forcibly removed and replaced with shiny new ones, coated in copper slip.

Happy Birthday Annie

Annie today

On 13th February 1985, my long wheel based, series III Land Rover ‘Annie’ was first registered with the DVLA. We have no idea what colour or specification she was when she left the factory and we can only speculate from clues found around her bodywork, on her initial employment (which we believe was as a tow truck) but these days, she is a much loved marine blue, truck cab with a 3/4 length tilt (canvas) over her load bed

I still remember my misgivings when, back in 2011, Mud announced that after careful consideration and much trawling of the internet, he had come to the conclusion that the ideal car for me was a Series Land Rover. 

Three Mudlets, a walk and Annie does it again

I had hoped to take a picture of Annie basking in her success (and the sun) but the rain stopped play.

As I walked backed into the kitchen last Saturday morning, the two youngest Mudlets greeted me with a level of semi interest brought on by the hope that my bag may contain more than a newly purchased box of painkillers. The need for painkillers, had been the reason given for why I had popped out but this still didn’t stop the girls from hoping that sweets or chocolate might have found their way in to my bag.

Annie in disgrace

Butter wouldn’t melt …… sadly the same couldn’t be said of the electrics.

Well okay maybe that’s a tad unfair, as she is over 30 years old and, let’s be honest, most modern cars would have long since made that final trip to the scrap yard and my beloved Series 3 Land Rover isn’t ready for that particular journey by any means. However, which ever way you look at it, try as I might, and believe me I have tried, I can’t think of a worse time for a cars lights to fail than in the middle of nowhere, on a very dark, miserable autumn night with me driving …… alone!