Apologies for the long gap. Life gets in the way sometimes! It’s been a busy couple of months (sorry!) since my last entry.

Having spent a while fettling Bumblebee the Camel v8 Discovery, and undoing various bodges perpetrated on her by previous owners, she is now reaching a stage where I am starting to trust her (although the v8/automatic combination still gives me the heeby jeebies). Recently she and I have been exploring various mountains regions in Fujairah and Sharjah including Wadi Asimah and Wadi Al Helo;

I do worry about the durability of the all-terrain tyres, which are road-biased, and also about their grip – for the same reasons. Ideally I’d like to swap for Cooper Discoverers or B F Goodrich AT (or MT) when budget allows. I’m running Michelin LTX at the mo which, though hard-wearing, are not really up to the variety of terrains I am asking them to deal with.

A surreal interlude recently – in the small town of Falaj al Mualla, in the Emirate of Umm Al Qawain, I drove past this;

An early-1950s Land Rover apparently nesting on a pole. In fact it’s a sign for a museum/garage owned by two Emirati guys which is 90% Land Rover. Land Rovers were the first cars to be used in the UAE, and much of the population still has great affection for them – as a result these two guys have squirrelled away a vast collection of early Land Rovers (and Bedford trucks and fire engines, Austin Gypsies, Dodge Power Wagons, etc etc, but the vast majority are Land Rovers) which are for sale and/or display. There are some real gems here and I was almost persuaded to sign away my internal organs in exchange for one….. maybe one day. Right now I have a 110 to stretch to a 130 back in the UK, which will take cash enough!

95% rebuilt 1952 Series 1 soft top…… an heirloom car. I wish I could afford the £14,000 he wants for it, even in this unfinished state. I had wild dreams about bank loans and driving it home. Maybe ask me in a year’s time.

Only a warehouse full – of 19 more Series Ones. Friends in the UK would have a conniption if they saw this. And this is just one warehouse out of about 5.

And finally, as Trevor MacDonald used to say, just a bit of fun. An ex-West Yorkshire Police motorway officer got in touch to say he knew Tusker,  my Discovery 2, when she was a v8 motorway patrol vehicle doing the M62 run in the early 2000s – and sent me a photo. A bit of faff with Photoshop then produced this ‘then and now’ image – the M62 in 2003 and home near York in 2017!