The build up started on the Thursday before the show, with a lone roll on/roll off skip delivered to the arena at the East of England Showground. By Saturday morning that had been flipped over, turned through 90-degrees, surrounded by ramps made from tree trunks and many more obstacles besides…
The course kicked-off with a punishing near-vertical wall of limestone, with drivers either powering up it as fast as they dare or opting to tread lightly and winch over the top. Either way, all you'd see is sky through the windscreen – as LRO editor Mike Goodbun discovered, clinging on in the passenger seat of Barrie Gee's phenomenal four-wheel steer monster.
On the other side of the crest was another angled-down skip, which was barely wider than some of the challenge trucks inching through it, with another tree trunk climb out of it leading on to a narrow log bridge.
Having crossed the upturned skip, then a looser log pile, drivers then took to an axle-twisting set of ramps on to a low-loader truck trailer. A digger was on stand by in case anyone wanted to deploy a winch cable to steady themselves on the way through.
A steep log stack at the end of that trailer might not have looked that tricky, but caught out some drivers who got hung up on it. And a final tyre and log 'pyramid' axle twister finished off the course.
The display of driver skill and some very trick machinery was phenomenal, and always drew a huge crowd to the arena.
Big thanks from all at LRO to John and Kelly Lawn, John Jennings, Barrie Gee and team Gee Force (John/Tony), Kevin Russell, KWR Plant Hire, Jamie Grant, Grenville Burton, Jeff and Joe McDonald, Anthony Peachey, and Team Flatdog (flatdoguk.com).
