Driving around Dartmoor was a breeze with the Freelander HSE TD4. The Freelander followed the Defender 110 driven by Matt Martin from Sandskater.
During the January snow that had led to Frozen Britain, Dartmoor got a fresh coat overnight. The night before had seen severe conditions on high ground and led to problems at Haldon Hill for the 2nd time in 11 months. The Pirelli Scorpion 225/55 R17 tyres coped fairly well, though some All Terrain tyres, such as BF Goodrich T/A’s, would be an improvement. When stationary with wheels dug into slippery ruts, the tyres lacked grip and it meant sliding sideways sometimes in order to climb out. Where there is a little space to reverse, any loose surface or ruts are easily overcome once the vehicle has a little momentum.
On slush, ice, fresh snow, packed snow the Freelander was in its element. Driving up and down inclines with all of the above was effortless. Traction control rarely came into effect, with ‘TC’ lighting up only when trying to transverse ruts from stationary.
The Land Rover never flinched when ascending a very slushy rutted stretch of road, even though the driver had visions of traction control kicking in and wheels spinning.
In fact the Freelander loved the snow, and was very capable, driving along ruts that had been made by vehicles with a much greater ground clearance – evident by the sound of the underside scraping the deeper snow.
Where there was room, the Freelander even managed to do some drifting, but that’s another story.. (see below for a brief video clip).
It was 150 years ago today, in London, England, that the publication of Charles Robert Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection‘ led to the fate of the Creator deity, commonly known as ‘God’.
God, who had seemingly enjoyed an almost universal popularity, with the masses singing his praises in church on Sundays, had always claimed to have created all the species as they were, and then destroyed them with a flood, except for the beasts that Noah took upon the Ark. Darwin showed this wasn’t necessarily so, by describing his observations and findings from his 5 year voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle, backed by evidence from another 20 years research.
In 1859 it had become evident that the Beagle had sunk the Ark, which was lost without a trace. There were no survivors.
Though word was slow to spread, and some still aren’t aware of the deity’s fatality, it has been apparent that the notion of the Almighty Creator has been dead for 150 years.
Upon this day, the 150th anniversary of Jehovah’s passing, our thoughts are with His Holy family.
‘On the Origin of Species‘ is available to read online at:
To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.
During the January snow that had led to Frozen Britain, Dartmoor got a fresh coat overnight. The night before had seen severe conditions on high ground and led to problems at Haldon Hill for the 2nd time in 11 months. The Pirelli Scorpion 225/55 R17 tyres coped fairly well, though some All Terrain tyres, such as BF Goodrich T/A’s, would be an improvement. When stationary with wheels dug into slippery ruts, the tyres lacked grip and it meant sliding sideways sometimes in order to climb out. Where there is a little space to reverse, any loose surface or ruts are easily overcome once the vehicle has a little momentum.
On slush, ice, fresh snow, packed snow the Freelander was in its element. Driving up and down inclines with all of the above was effortless. Traction control rarely came into effect, with ‘TC’ lighting up only when trying to transverse ruts from stationary.
