JETHRO BOVINGDON

I THINK I LIKE OFF-ROADING. THIS IS A troubling development. People who like off-roading are a different breed. They drive Defenders in faux military colours and have 1000 tins of food buried in their back garden. They wear heavy steel-capped boots to Tesco, faded T-shirts of some crappy ’80s rock band everywhere and probably know how to filter their own urine to create drinking water should the need ever arise. They use CB radios. I repeat. They use CB radios.

Yet that’s not the off-roader’s worst, and then attacking descents with such vigour they actually have a person stand in front to guide them down one rock, root or fallen branch at a time. They spend thousands of hours and considerable sums creating vehicles with tortuous axle articulation and unthinkable approach and departure angles only to traverse terrain at walking pace. Sorry for all the italics. Think of them as a profanity substitute. These people deserve italics and profanity. They are idiots.