Land Rover Owner May 2019

Land Rovers and camping go together like, er, two things that go together quite nicely. Both bring you freedom, either from the monotony of the tarmac road network, or the hectic pace of modern life. If you’ve never sat under a cloudless sky at night and looked up at the stars, you haven’t lived. And it’s not the same sitting in your back garden – you need to be somewhere new. Longer trips take more planning, but gather all your gear together and be ready to head off when the weather forecast is fine. Or, if you’re more hardy, avoid the crowds by camping when the weather is more inclement. It’s even better if you find somewhere you can have an open fire. I’ve already been out this year and I hope to do…

1st prize ADAM CLEMSON WINS A SEALEY AUTO-DARKENING WELDING HELMET ‘Adam took this pic of his Disco 2 on the last day of a tour through Portugal, during a stop in an olive grove near the River Duoro. It has that real “want to be there” quality to it.’ NEIL WATTERSON, EDITOR 2nd prize MATT HARLING WINS A SEALEY ½IN SQUARE DRIVE EXTENDABLE BREAKER BAR ‘Great photography from Matt, who couldn’t have wished for more drama in this shot of Phil Bodham really going for it in his D2 at Kirton Lindsey, Lincolnshire.’ NEIL WATTERSON, EDITOR…

1st PRIZE Sealey heavy duty tyre inflator with twin push-on connector (SA39) LIST PRICE £87.54 2nd PRIZE Sealey automatic brake & clutch bleeder (VS0205) LIST PRICE £37.74 For a chance to see one of your photos in print, send it to wolr@ LRO.com. Include a description of the vehicle and where the photo was taken, along with the names of anyone in it. Please send the biggest image file sizes you have. This issue, it’s well done to first-placed Adam Clemson, who wins an auto-darkening welding helmet from our friends at Sealey. Second prize, a Sealey 1/2in square drive extendable breaker bar goes to Matt Harling.…

Not many folk would tackle Australia’s treacherous interior off-road in a secondhand Saab 900 – but Graham and Ingrid Roberts aren’t exactly typical folk. The couple readily recall their earliest sojourns into the outback 25 years ago in their modest Saab, carrying little more than a tent and a box of tinned food. ‘We got sick of building roads for it,’ says Ingrid. ‘Out behind the Gammon Ranges in South Australia, we were constructing our own tracks from rocks and sticks – the locals couldn’t believe that we got through.’ And neither could I – not until being handed proof in the form of an old photo showing Graham, in the midst of an ochre quagmire, scooping clods of clay from the stricken Saab’s wheelarches. Unsurprisingly, they both decided there had to be…

The Discovery was once the backbone of public safety on the UK’s motorway and trunk road network, but numbers have dwindled in recent years. That’s all set to change now, with Highways England taking delivery of the first of 70 specially modified Discos that will patrol the network. The base Land Rovers are 3.0-litre Sd6 SE models, which will get an internal and external makeover. The rear load area has been reinforced to cope with 600kg of equipment – including lights, traffic cones and safety barriers – that the vehicles routinely carry. External changes are more obvious with the familiar retro-reflective yellow and black Battenberg livery ensuring that drivers should – if they’re paying attention, of course – see them. And there’s the familiar roof-mounted light array to catch drivers’ attention together with…

A project aiming to help eliminate malaria by 2040 has received a Discovery to help achieve its goal. The Mobile Malaria Project (MMP) was the winner of the Royal Geographic Society’s 2018 bursary; and, as part of that, MMP gets the use of a specially kitted-out Discovery for its eight-week trip across sub-Saharan Africa. The project is made up of three Oxford University researchers, led by Dr George Busby. They’ll travel almost 4000 miles across Namibia, Tanzania and Kenya, investigating the challenges facing those on the front line of malaria control in Africa, where 90 per cent of the world’s cases occur. The Discovery is equipped with a mobile genetic sequencing laboratory that makes full use of the load space. As well as a fridge/freezer to safely store scientific supplies, there is also a…