Betty Climbs a Welsh Mountain! (almost) - AU Fairmont adventures
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- Опубліковано 24 кві 2022
- What began as a simple Vlog of our day turned rather more dramatic, as Waze directed us up a greenlane. In a car I've already managed to get stuck on stony beaches on both sides of the world...
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The purely Australian Ford, performing the off road trial on deep Welsh countryside, that's was perfect sample of Martix error for random onlooker! :)
Owner here. Staylittle really is in the middle of nowhere. Hope you enjoyed the lack of power and the obscene amount of quiksilver logos the car provided. 😎👍
Cheers. Video should be up tomorrow.
I'm sure that farm track was the one that three friends and myself ended up doing the full length of, in a Morris Minor Traveller, with us having to carry it at points when it bottomed out. Great fun, especially in the pouring rain.
Back in the pre SUV days, the Falcon / Fairmont could be ordered with a "Country Pack" which included upgraded suspension and bash plate for use on unsealed roads.
You've driven Betty on gravel roads at each end of the world 👏👏👏
The world is round….it doesn’t have ends
Standard "Dirt Road" for us Kiwi's....
Nothing really much of a problem here for any of us in NZ! ;)
This reminds me of a family trip to Scotland in 1967 from Cambridgeshire in our newly restored 1928 Rolls Phantom 1 limousine ,bought for £190 2 years earleir to show the previous owner, a retired GP and his family who had left Newgate Street in Hertfordshire to the most remote hamlet without any services in what was then Westmorland , Cumpstone House near Kirby Stephen before the advent of postcodes.Told to turn off the A66 through a named 5-barred gate along a track worse than roads like these , the stiffly sprung fully laden car was taken to the extremes of its capabilities right to the door where the wind was unbearable .The look on the family's faces , leading to tears and the doctor's wife kissing the Spirit of Ectasy , I shall never forget !.
I think a Fiat Panda 4x4 needs to join the fleet!
Ah - fond memories of family holidays, driving past signs saying "Unsuitable for motor vehicles" and dad saying"it's just a suggestion"
Well it is a blue sign. If they wanted you to listen to them it would have a red border :)
Just a nice trip out on a little gravel road. Lovely!
Paper bag needed... For a panic attack. Or... To be unwell into... LOL
I love the spectacular landscape in Wales.
The hills are alive with the sound of.. HubNut.😁
ua-cam.com/video/-uoQFQed-4I/v-deo.htmlm26s
As a child on holiday, our family used to go exploring the byways. My dad always said "it's nothing to worry about, until you see grass growing down the middle of the road."
There were roads here in Surrey that had grass growing in the middle of the road until fairly recently.
@@Graham_Langley There you go...very worrying. LOL
My running coach attempted driving up the track to path to no path up Mount Snowdon after a mountain race I did one year. We got 50 yards up a track behind the Spar in Llanberis before he realised his red saloon Rover 75 wasn't "quite" the right vehicle of choice. 😁
That looks like a road we attempted on a camping holiday back in the 80’s. Austin Maxi fully laden with trailer tent in tow. The lane had a humped section of grass down the middle that eventually became a little too high. I was only a kid but can recall much of what my Dad said quite clearly…
You got to love Waze. Once it decided to try to get me to drive over a field. I too declined its delightful suggestion and turned around.
Left map reading on the way to a BBQ to a new girlfriend many years ago. She tried to route us onto the M23 from an overbridge...
My AU had the country pack suspension, and the extra ground clearance was much appreciated when I got on some similar roads one day.
This reminds me so much of my wife trying to ascend Mount Pantokrator in Corfu, on the wrong gravel road, in a hired Citroen C3. This was very, very scary! The road had no space to turn around and a huge drop on one side. In the end, we found a bit of road just wide enough to facilitate a multi-point turn with me outside making sure she stopped at each point before plunging to a certain death taking our two daughters with her. We eventually found the perfectly good tarmac road to the summit that our satnav had neglected to mention the first time around.
So British. The farmer gives a friendly wave and a smile while thinking to himself 'wt🤬' 😂lol.
Glad you extricated yourselves from that one! 🙂👍 We did something like that in an old Metro VP. Ended up completely circumnavigating Yr Wyddfa. On the worst part of the road, we came face to face with another Metro with the next registration plate to ours. Both drivers were equally surprised, but neither of us dare stop. Fun times.
Had a similar experience while driving in wales, wife programmed the sat-nag for a route back to the cottage and started directing. Roads became steadily worse but we carried on until the sheep started turning round and going back, time to check the sat-nag. Was it on shortest route instead of fastest? No, it was on walking, a feature I didn't know it had till then.
Exploring dodgy roads in inappropriate vehicles is a must! We went exploring tracks in the high peak in Derbyshire in our (now departed) E350 estate, loads of grunt, no ground clearance and brushing the mirrors on either side + some grass up the middle of the road to polish the underbody!
Very well survived Ian and Ms Hubnut. I remember the pre sat-nav days in the 80's where if you were unsure of where to go you pulled over and asked some kindly person for directions and usually this was all fine. Once though on a motorcycle with my ex missus and what seemed like a lot of luggage tied to the back of the bike leaving less mass over the front wheel (we live and learn... well live anyway) we ended up going up a rather steep hill with tight turns and run off areas for safety. Keeping the front wheel of my bike on the deck was a real challenge as bikes won't steer of the front wheel is airborne and lifting the front under power was way too easy with very little throttle applied but we got to the camp site in the end. Anyway well done Betty, you did a sterling job in them there hills.
I could hear the Banjo/guitar duel music from "Deliverance"! Having said that, I can see why you call it paradise. Stunning place.
Betty's had quite a few adventures in both hemispheres!
Had a very similar journey a number of years ago in our Xsara Picasso, with my wife, son and friends 🙈 It actually coped surprisingly well.....and like your good selves we didn't die, lol. Definitely a win!
There’s nothing more capable than an Aussie Falcon in the bush, other than a rental Aussie Falcon.
Definitely reminded there of the NZ trip. If the fences were different you could have been back there.
Another forgotten highway. If only you had a car with an adjustable ride height. 🙂
The Partners and Berlingo(e)s hold their value well. I was looking for ages for my parents. It's a pity they stopped importing the Kangoo here.
The fear of driving when you dont know where you are actually going and it turns to rubble makes exciting viewing "The Hubnuts in Peril"
I'd be stressed as a passenger too, Hubnut drives with the same confidence in his directions as my Dad...
Oh, the joy of Ordnance Survey maps coupled with the challenge of memorising your route in advance! Using them is rapidly becoming a lost art. Admittedly I use satnav to find my daughter's house as she lives on a modern development with about 15 lefts and rights and every corner and house looking the same.
Betty handled those gravel roads quite well after all its an Australian built Ford not a pommy built Ford it is designed to handle those conditions
Quite the little side trip, w/ spectacular scenery! Reminds me of a few adventures I had w/ friends in my '84 Accord, going up switchback gravel/dirt/washboard roads in the Washington Cascades (lots of trees, but STEEP dropoffs!) On one such outing, we got quite a ways up into the hills, only to round a bend, and find a large trailer/caravan, parked across the road, blocking further access. A rather large Mountain Man-sort emerged, looking none too friendly (there are folks who hide out in the Cascades and Olympics, to escape society); I quickly found reverse, some kind of turn-around point, and back down the mountain we went. Thanks again for taking us along on your travels!
I have added this to my to do list! Thank you.
4:04 Mighty Car Mods 🤣 Hello from Au. 👋
You definitely led Betty up the garden path on that Byway, at least you can now boast that Betty has been on a BOAT on land!
Tiki tours are such fun!😆
Wow it's Betty the 4x4 Fairmont. I never seen such rugged roads before, at least you got back to safety and were able to find the Peugeot and do the test drive. I look forward to seeing the next Adventurous episode of Hubnut.
He: "We'll be fine."
She: "We're going to die."
Oh, and you really should drive Trollstigen together in Norway some time :)
Indeed, breathtaking stuff.
I once found myself in a similar situation in Cumbria. If you've never done a 15 point turn in a Volvo V70 on uneven ground you have missed an experience.
"this is not the car for this type of road" (laughs in New South Welshman)
The man who went up a hill and came down a mountain!
one of my favourite ever videos from you, and ive watched nearly them all! :P
You wanted my Shogun lol. 👍😂🇬🇧🏴
Been there, done that. With a trailer. Full of furniture.
After that I set my satnav to "exclude unmetalled roads".
hang on isn't the fleet meant to be shrinking ;-). I'm jealous of the space and peace in Wales.
outstanding!!!!!!!! hahahhahaha I've not laughed so much for a good while, love it guys keep up the good work
My first job was deliveries in a second gen Partner and that’s where I learned never to trust my GPS as it kept showing me illegal routes.
I never tried the first gen Partner and mostly used a Dangel 4x4 model which probably had a different suspension setup, but I drove a lot on snow/ice and absolutely hated the handling. It was tuned so heavily for understeer I had to find unique lines through roundabouts and almost got into trouble from having fun when I got into normal cars that would rotate around corners and could take roundabouts much faster. I drove the Partner unloaded and if I provoked the rear it could snap quickly so I think it was tuned like that because of how poorly it dealt with oversteer.
Heck, as a property valuer driving around hilly Tumbarumba, Tumut and Holbrook, I encountered all sorts of rough tracks and I was amazed how my AU Falcons pulled through.
Mine gets stuck VERY easily. A limited slip diff would make a world of difference.
@@HubNut a little more clearance and a bash plate under the sump helps a lot. Mind you, on Sunday, when driving my 2013 Mazda 3 along the Wombeyan Caves Road from Moss Vale, it hit a massive pothole and blew my front left tyre. I hate space-saver spare wheels, especially after had to drive 300km with it 🤬
Lol …my sat nav does that to me all the time, single dirt track road are a firm favourite to send me down.
Funny, I had just said to my screen that Betty would be used to the gravel roads in her home country and this would be fine....and then you pretty much said as much! I took a VN Commodore V6 (with a manual box) up the very tip of the Coromandel peninsula, where there are roads like that and others that are just two bare lines in the grass and that just peter out into fields and leave you wondering where they go next. A great honeymoon it was too! It was a bit hairy when on the side of a hill, in winter, in a misty rain, I was trying to do a hill-start through a gate my new wife was holding open, in a field of cows, with a big V6 and a heavy clutch, I can tell you! She did it though - and like you, turning around at the other end was very entertaining. With the amount of swearing that appeared during the 59-point-turn I made, I understand completely as to why there was no clip in YOUR video of the big Fairmont coming about! All the best
At the other extreme, you should try doing deliveries to Sunderland Point near Heysham. The last stretch involves driving across a beach; time that wrong and you need a submarine!
Very similar to my experience of using Waze in rural Ireland, though I usually give up when there are gates involved! One time I did find a manual level crossing, I didn't know they existed here.
Happened to me driving from Cardiff to Cheltenham, wrong turning! It was hilarious, we couldn’t stop laughing 😂
Oddly, you mentioning wanting an LDV Maxus and having a sat nav related adventure.
Recently I went on a mission to collect some raw materials purchased on ebay in the Maxus. I put the address in my Sat Nav and was pleasantly surprised to find that the two pick up points were only a few miles apart. Pick up one was straightforward, a load of plywood. So off I went to pickup no. 2. The sat nav guided me onto a bridlepath but as the target was only about 500 yards away I pressed on as far as I could but wound up literally jammed between hedges, wheels spinning on a steep gravel track incline. I couldn't even get out to walk the final distance to the pick up. I then had the unenviable task of reversing about a quarter of a mile back down the track, branches squealing down both sides as I retreated. Sometimes it's an actual blessing to own a vehicle without a straight panel on it anywhere.
Eventually I found a gateway I could get turned around in, got the map out and worked out an alternative route. Several miles later I got to pickup no.2. The alternate route turned out to be three sides of a square but was all on regular tarmac. Talking to the folks at the second pickup they confirmed how close I'd got but apparently I would have needed a trials bike to actually get out at the other end.
I think that the sat nav gets fooled by bridleways because they are legally roads and you have to be operating a fully legal vehicle to traverse them.
A case of "Computer Says Yes".
Showing off the beautiful Welsh countryside though.
reminded me of the time I had to reverse my Mazda MX5 down a single mountain track north of Dan yr Ogof caves in the Swansea Valley after we (Dexter my Border Terrier and me) got caught out in a freak and thunderously heavy blizzard. couldn't see the sides of the road and did it all on memory! absolutely terrifying and the anxiety born chest pains were something else!!
This reminds me of a house-hunting trip in western Ireland in a Mk2 Astra van, before the days of satnav. Nearly all the little white cottages on my list were hard to find but in one case the road kept getting narrower and rougher. There were fuchsia hedges and I got to a part where they had not been trimmed so they were brushing the sides of the van. It got so dense I could not carry on but by then the door mirrors were embedded in the hedges! The van did not have rear or side windows so my only option was to reverse blind until the mirrors were out of the foliage. I reversed about half a mile then came to a field gate. I had to open the gate and reverse into the field to turn the van round.
Google maps tried taking me up a similar rough track once. My mistake,still had the thing on cycling mode!
I did the same a few years ago in a Ford Focus - Took a "shortcut" over the hill between Pontypridd and Caerphilly. Not sure who was more surprised, the sheep or me!
😂😂😂😂
Hi Ian. That was like me many years ago in Besty-coed I delivered a kitchen to a customer upon arrival I said I can't get my van onto her drive as the access road is narrower than my wheelbase .
Renault Traffic (I think) with twin wheels on the rear axle. she said it will fit (I tried it) and drove in and unloaded. then she said you will have to reverse as she won't allow me to turn around on her drive. halfway down I got out to find one wheel was in mid-air with a huge drop. oddly enough on the drive back engine blew up.
gee i thought you had found the Paris-Rambouillet bike race track!
A Berlingo/partner must be a must for the Hubnut fleet, you even get me now looking at Berlingo's and wondering if it has the storage box in the roof.... Great video, great little trip even if you nearly get stuck up a mountain!
Just picked up a 2012 auto for the dad…… Dosnt have the modutop spec. Collected from Troon and after a 40 mile drive hasnt lost one mile from the miles left in tank. Only downside is like normal autos it Dosnt creep when going into reverse
Lost in the fog, down a hole, with an owl.
After this video Im quite tempted to try Waze maps in the works van . Really great video I was in fits of laughter
This is exactly what Australian cars were made for. Now we have overseas designed crap to deal with these conditions! We are talking about a sedan here not a 4x4! So excellent/
A few more adventures like this and you and Miss HubNut will have a lifetimes supply of anecdotes for all occasions. My wife and I know all about such off road excursions. Fortunately I rely on Satnav now rather than her map reading skills.
Waze has only done this to me once. I’d been to St Etienne as I’d been given tickets through work to a minor match during the Euro 2016 (I certainly wouldn’t ever buy tickets to a soccer match) Saint Etienne is an awful place to try driving around at the best of times - even with a satnav. I then used Waze in pedestrian mode to find my way from where I parked in a back street to the stadium. After the match I had to find my way home 60km to Tournon. So I set my address to Waze and away I went. I did feel the 10 hours quoted as journey time was a bit strange, but hey, St Etienne, so I figured it would eventually correct itself. I shortly found my way half way up a mountain and alarm bells started when it told me I needed to drive onto a pedestrian hiking route.
Ho hum, I then realized I’d forgotten to switch Waze back to car mode 😬Doh!!!
Funnily enough the scenery around St Etienne I’d just like Wales. It’s a sort of French Merthyr Tydfil. Ex mining area too. I really don’t understand why they play that stupid game with a round ball and not a proper game🤣
What a pair of wimps!!!! I couldn't stop laughing. 🤣🤣🤣
I'm in Melbourne (Aust) and we used to have B roads, although wider, like that. Volume of traffic has dictated the sealing of them slowly, but my old land crab easily negotiated similar roads. You have to drive a bit further these days to get roads like that. A friends drive way near Yea is far worse, and I regularly visit in my Ford Territory 2wd. Remember, those Fords were designed to be tough and be used on unsealed roads all day everyday!😂😂😂
a very HubNut adventure indeed. xD
We have some roads like this round here, only moved here last summer. Which is why I am now looking for a CRV to replace my V40.
I've done exactly this in my work van!
Marvellous! Great entertainment 😊
Betty was designed for Australian dirt roads (allegedly). I'm sure a few miles of hill track is fine. Though I wouldn't fancy reversing it a long way back if you met oncoming traffic, as there didn't appear to be many (any ?) passing places.
Great entertainment. Keep it up! 👍🤎
Brilliant video Ian 👍 omg that mountain and that tank I don't know how you got that up there
A very thrilling entertainment 🙂 I was in a similar situation just a week a go. The noise of car versus gravel road is still very presend in my mind. I was holding my breath nearly the whole video. Thank you for sharing this!
here in Alaska that's a standard road and the hubnut decal on my vw bus has seen roads like that.
It gets really exciting when you meet oncoming traffic on those single lanes.
Great video so far. That road looks like FUN!! A suggestion for dealing with the torque. Select second gear. On Ford automatic gearboxes, selecting Second usually locks out 1st, and all gears above, the same as second gear on a manual shift
We have a washed out gravel lane near our farm that the council have insisted to mark with a road sign. Someone has repeatedly spray painted/scraped over the name over the name but it seems to be the only sign in the area the council is monitoring as it has been rapidly repaired more times than I can count. I think whoever kept trying to stop it being labeled gave up after that (not any of us, although I made the mistake of mentioning the sign to someone who was lost once, so I don't know if they or whoever they were visiting took issue with it (I don't go by names of the various places around here, particularly when the council call it a '... park' as a link to somewhere on a completely different road, so when I saw the sign pop up and they were looking for that, I didn't realise it was for a group of houses one road over where I had never been, prior to that anyway)). I think the council went off Google Maps that show this lane as linking a group of houses up a small lane from the road you're supposed to access them from vs this long lane that goes up a hillside from our end. I've been up there once on a quad going after livestock that broke out and that's about all I'd be up there with.
The addresses are all also messed up on our road when going by Google Maps. Half of them are dumped in a field halfway along the road nowhere near the houses they belong to, a couple are vaguely right then the rest are for some reason placed as our farm, and you can tell who is following purely the postcode, as it's at the end of our lane practically and they all end up up with us too. :) We've had supermarket vans drive past then a few minutes later drive back up, so we know one of 4 houses have ordered from 'xx', then we know if visitors for the end of the road have followed satnav as they end up with us, and customers of a business following purely the postcode also end up with us. I've contemplated putting a sign at the bottom of our lane, 'you're looking for xx, go back that way'. :)
Thought it was the start of The Rocky Horror show for a minute 😁
You should have said to the Farmer:- I'm lost I'm looking for New Zealand, do you know the way? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Best offroad channel on the interwebs! 😉
another magical mystery tour. Poor Miss Hubnut!
I remember picking up a w126 years ago and the sat nav took us straight across an actual field, must have been quite a sight barreling along, bright red Merc followed at speed by a Miami blue 306 of my mates full of tools and stuff, adventures by accident are the best
Also when we go to Wales Google maps and download local area so it still works without signal
I enjoyed Miss Hubnut's impression of Mr Hubnut at the end!
That was hugely entertaining! Maybe it could herald a new series? Betty tries inappropriate roads……….
An Aussie would say" That's not a gravel road!" "We have boulder in ours" "C'mon mate that was nothing!" I agree with you that it was not the correct vehicle to go on that gravel road and damage it for no reason at all"
It’s a good job that Betty’s so good on fuel so you don’t need to worry about that! I find Waze often needs interrogating further and checking all the route options not the default, often ridiculous option.
Um, she likes a drink...
Ha, I've got some scheduled green laning coming up too since I just bought a Bedford CF camper on top of a hill somewhere in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall. I'm slightly terrified of the prospect of getting it down said hill when I go to collect it...
Quite a place for powerful rear wheel drive with slippery rear-end... 😄
But what a beautiful place 🤩
Although the boys at Broadmeadows didn't consider such narrow lanes, these roads are actually nothing much compared to the real Aussie rural dirt roads that these cars were designed to deal with. The are still plenty of AU's out here in Alice and surrounds.
G'day really enjoyed this content on your drive in the mountains please keep the mould coming especially with Betty
From William...
Ex busnutter...
My 2001 Blue Ford Falcon SR Sedan
T-Bar Automatic is still running well Touchwood...
Funny video lovely roads 🚘🚙🚗👍👍👍
Been driving through deep water here in Canada recently thanks to all the snow still on the ground and torrential rain.
And many suffering from flooded basements. Us included. Fortunately I managed to keep of top of it, so we managed to get away without too much hardship. Some aren’t so lucky, come garbage day, I’m sure we’ll see lots of ruined carpets and other detritus, victims of the flooding.
i've had waze do this to me several times. the traffic warnings are a godsend but the route guidance is not up to the standard of google maps.
Funny, as they are owned by Google!
@@frothe42 oiiiiii veyyyyyyyy
"Random acts of navigation" as I view it.
Have you the NZ plates in the back? You could have done a quick swap and claimed "Because Tourist!". 😄
Ha! Sadly not.
She - 'Nice chapel'.
He - 'Nice Carpark'.