Training

Although Pete had driven many times off road in Africa it was nearly always through sand and it had been some years ago so we decided a refresher course was called for.

Also we had never used a winch before so it was essential we learned how to operate this safely.

Finding a cost effective way of doing this type of training was not so easy, one company wanted £700 to do a one day winching course for two!

Luckily we saw an advert in LRO advertising their off road driver day and a winching day in October,  run by Vince Cobleys Protrax company.

On two successive weekends we got up at the crack of dawn and drove to Leicestershire to start the courses at 9.45 prompt.

Both days were great fun and we met some other overlanders who like us were shortly off on their travels.

The winching course was especially useful as it proved our new winch was up to job of pulling out the 130 and gave us the confidence for when we need to use this in anger.

Each course cost £60 for the day with just one driver, excellent value for money.

The only other training which we would have liked to have done more of was a on the vehicle mechanics. We had hoped to use Footloose who run a one day 'Get to know your vehicle course' but unfortunately they could not fit us in.

However, we did spend a very useful day with Richard at Foleys watching him change an oil seal on the transfer box (nightmare job to do if stuck on the road) where he also gave us some good tips on a number of maintenance tasks.

Time will only tell if we should have done more in this area.