One of the most enjoyable camps we hold are those that are ‘back to basics’ and in preparation for the Great Escape 12 explorers spent the night at Hammerwood scout camp in bivvy bags and under tarps. Having run these for a number of years they are fairly straight forward but in typical 17th Reigate style, never uneventful.
Hammerwood campsite, near East Grinstead, is an unspoilt area of woods where the warden is quite happy, if you have the right vehicle, for you to drive into the woods, right to your pitch. So this presented a great opportunity for Tony’s and Mike’s jeeps. Meandering through the woods with Mike leading everything was going well until the point of crossing a bridle path which had turned into a quagmire of mud. With cautious manoeuvring the land cruiser traversed the path, quickly lost grip and slid sideways into the ditch, taking the gate with it. Some hasty revving of the engine and spinning of the wheels soon found Mike’s jeep further into the ditch with the rear passenger wheel now spinning happily in mid-air! So for the next 2 hours various attempts of shoring up the ditch with logs and winching/towing with Tony’s jeep were attempted before deciding it was too dark and we still hadn’t eaten.
The rescue attempts began again the following morning and slowly but surely the land cruiser reappeared from the ditch just at the point when some additional help appeared.
