On Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:33:56 +0000, Steve Firth wrote:

Dave wrote:

Steve Firth wrote:
snip

More point to all the people who flagged me down and earnestly told me I
would "never get that big thing up/down that hill" every one of them was
wrong.

I'll bet it had Rover somewhere in its name :-)

Umm no, it's a Ford.

Y'know, I had one of those Ford Explorer things on hire a couple of
years ago and I was thinking to myself when I saw it "uh oh, this is going
to be trouble" (I'd heard lots of bad things about them, and we'd just
been told it was a 4x4 at the rental place, not what make/model until we
picked it up).

Full credit to it though - I got it up and down snow and ice-covered
mountainsides many a time, where there were plenty of other 4x4s falling
off the side of the roads (cars just didn't have a hope in hell, and there
were a few big truck drivers vainly stopped and putting snow chains on -
they were always still right where I'd seen them the next day)

It was quite a nice thing to drive in those sorts of conditions -
quite sure-footed and lots of feedback as to what the wheels were doing.

cheers

Jules