The Dirty Dragons

Night Driving again, more passengers than cars, and a few new discoveries.

We headed out, around 22:00, and headed straight to the !Water Lane”. This was the last lane we drove down the other night, and, as the other night, it was stll heavily flooded. It seemed a little easier, as in general this track was downhill in this direction. We got the junction that leads upto the masts, and headed up there.

After visiting the masts, we headed down to the bad bend, and then headed to the track we also did the last time we were out.

We traveled down it, but there was a choice of 3 drops, at the first big drop. This lead to a slightly diffent path, and, this time, with being slightly down hill to last time, and not having drizzle, and low cloud, we could see what looked like a quad track! Of course, we palyed here dor a while, and after that……

We headed on over to the Big Puddle track. We proceded throught the big puddle, and the days since we went throught it last had softened up the mud even more. Really need good guards for this section now!

We stopped, and checked out the cars, to make sure nothing vital hadnt been damaged. We headed out, and had decided to look at a different moutain. We went there, but acess was poor. We marked it for investigtion another night.

On the way back, we stopped to look at some tracks discovered while some of the boys were out mountain biking. We had a sniff around, got a little hung up on the way out, and had some practice using sand ladders, and pushing techniques!

However, at one point little warning was given about a spin up, and we got showered with mud. Ho Hum.

A fun night again. A few more discoveries, and a few more techniques practiced.

Its’ what it is all about!

We had a late start tongiht, not finishing picking me up, setting up comms and heading off before 22:30.

We headed north, heading into the lanes as soon as we could. We arrived at the start of the hills, and decided to have a little look around, at some tracks to the side of the main route. We found what looked like it would be an excellent hill climb, and nted it to check out, on a daylight trip, (we would not have been able to go up it tonight anyway, as someone had dumped a load of what looked like building waste at the start of the tracks, and we didn’t fancy going over that!)

We headed up, and Spud, with Caveman onboard, headed upto the masts. Cam, with myself as co-pilot, hanged back a bit, and waited for them to drop down, and re-join us on the main track.

We headed over to the hills, and shortly was on the main road. We precceded down there a short while, and turned off, and headed uphilL. This was the reverse route we used the other night, so it was failrly familiar to us. We carried on, past the crest, and had a look around towards the left of the hill. We were not doing too well on the slippery grass and mud, so decided to add a pit stop. We soon headed off the mountain,  we crossed back over, headed to the main road, and headed down to the nearest village. We refulled on pasties, biscuits, and drinks, and dropped our tyre pressures down.

Refuelled, we headed back up to the hills, and took the track back towards the Big Puddle. We have had quite a lot of rain in the last few days, and where this section was quite squiddy the other day, tonight it was more so. After checking it out, checking the amount of sludge that was in the ruts, we decided to call it. We didnt’t think we would get stuck, but the conditions would have meant the cars would be grounding out in places, causing possible damage.

We headed back, and headed back up the hill, the same as we had the other night. We made a few variations on the way back down, taking tracks to the left instead of the right, to vary it a bit.

Spud thought that, instead of us hitting th road early, by heading right, it we head left, we may continue more off road, and join the road close to the other track, we would take towards the masts again. This worked like a charm, and we were near the corner we needed, being around 100 m short.

The other night we took a track don towards a gate, where we had to call it a night, due to having to head home to cover a possible medical emergency. We noticed there was a track that would take us up this hill to the right.

We went down to the gate, and headed 180 back up, heading slightly right towards the other track. This soon turned right, with a long, very straight track up the hill. Cam and I walked most of this to the top, or at least a plateu most of the way up. It was decided this would be an excellent extended uphill section, and marked it for future daytime investigation.

We continued on the track to the right, the start of which was very tight, and close to a wall. This soon opened up, and we began climbing, shallower than the climb we had just walked. we gradually made our way up, and soon re-joined the usual track towards the mast.

There is a section where you had a choice, to keep low, and stay on gravel, or head above the gravel track, on a mud track, which has more of a camber on it (heading towards the gravel track.)

We kept to the gravel, while Spud tried the mud track. Conditions got the better of him, and with the amount of poor ground, and severe camber, he bailed, the slippage was too great. He carried up the gravel track.

We were at the top, and in case they needed assistance, we headed down, and took the mud track. 85% of the track was fine, or at least reasonable. We came appon the tricky section, however, we were heading downhill, and was able to tacke this section, all be it with some considerable slippage!

We rejoined the gravel track again, and we then carried on up…..

Spud and Caveman, in the lead car, decided (?) to mix it up a bit, and instead of taking the usual track up, headed to the left again. This provided a very enjoyable section, with a lot of water, fairly deep, and some fairly long too.

The first section was reasonable, and was quite a good laugh. One section, while we were waiting for Spud to go through, we noticed the water at the back went above the lights in Spuds back bumper, so pretty deep!

We powered through, not giving the water time to seep into anything. (We did have a split second lights off moment though!)

Soon after going through this section we returned to a normal road, and it was time to head home.

A really good night out., with new areas spoted for further investigation.

We left Cardiff around 20:30, heading up through Caerphilly, towards the Slags.

The Slags are a bunch of slag heaps, with some gentle, and not so gentle slopes leding into, and up them. They are approached from common land, following tacks with varying degrees of roughness.

We approached through the woods, and already it was dark. (Some may think it is mad to go off road in the dark, but, with good lights, and a sence of caution, it is doable! Best to go there is daylight first, so you can see how the ground lies.)

We took some gentle rises, stopping and checking the ground for routes, and to check nothing had been dumped there, which we would have been unaware of. This was an enjoyable series of climbs, ending in a few steep drops to bring us out of the slags, at the back end.

We circled back to the wooded entrance, finding a few small puddles to play in at the end.

We left the slags, and headed for the masts, along the fairly rutted track. All was going well, however, with the heavyrain we have had in this area lately, there were some bits of deep water.

We stopped and took some pictures, to show how deep it was. Spud’s SportTrak can be seen here, water upto the running boards!

After this we headed along the track, until a track heading up the hill to our left was navigatable. We headed up the hill, the terain consisting of grass over rock, so the ground was quite firm here, and the two sporttrak’s in the convoy toddled up without any incidents.

At teh top, we stoped for a natter, and to gather our bearings.

Heading down was mainly gentle slopes, with flat sectiosn, and this turned out to be gentle enough for MudBaby12 to have some practice in off-roading!.

We continued down to the main (err really?) road, and we headed towards the track that would head over more common ground towards the masts. We decided to explore a little, and headed down a track to the right. This was a fairly slow section, involving heavily rutted and rocky track, puntuated with tracks off the the left, with a steep drop to the right.

At this time ( approx. 00:40) we had a call to return home, due to a medical emergency. We dropped down the track, turned around, and headed to civilitation.

All turned out fine at home, arriving there around 01:30.

An enjoyable time was had, Night Off-Roading!

I intend to do little reviews of the off raod trips that are made, with me acting as co-pilot and photographer.