Desert Racing

Most 4x4 vehicle owners never do anything more adventurous than park on a grass verge or mount the kerb to park on the pavement (sidewalk). Just as well, since if they all took to serious off-roading, the enviromental damage would be immense.

However, there is one kind of terrain which gets replenished rapidly - snow and ice. Check out this report of a Newbie tour (!) in Iceland. These are ordinary 4X4s, fitted with the huge tyres people usually assocate with US mud racing. Deep, soft snow demands very low tyre pressures (these folks were down to 1 or 2 psi at times) which requires soft tyre walls - as one member found out to his cost. Do you fancy reseating both inner and outer beads of a collapsed tyre in freezing weather?

The rest of us have to play on sand and rock, or cross deep rivers like these Namibian safari guys at play after the customers have flown back home.

I lived in Botswana for 12 years, during which I lived in houses well off the tarred roads and regularly visited outlying villages, so I owned a series of 4x4s.

The first was a beat-up old diesel Land Cruiser with tired leaf springs. I eventually realised that the reason it hopped all over the place on uneven tarred roads was because the bump stop was hitting the edge of the diff casing and pushing the whole front axle to one side. Quite unnerving at 60 mph.

That was followed by a slightly newer petrol-engined Land Cruiser, which one of my African workers took for a run without my permission and rolled when he tried to turn across a small bridge without slowing down.

After that, I bought a 1989 Hi-Lux double cab that had been heavily used by a friend who specialised in construction contracts in virgin desert territory. It served me well, and had done over half a milion kilometres by the time I left Botswana and sold it t my gardener. He's still using it.

I did plenty of miles on dirt roads, some badly carved up by earlier rains, but only a couple of elementary river crossings and some short trips across a slimy mud known locally as 'black cotton'. The first time I hit that stuff inadvertently, I had to get out in bare feet and turn the front wheel diff locks on before I could go any further.

Actually, you very rarely need a 4x4. Most terrain in Africa can be crossed with a pickup that has big wheels and knobbly tyres, as long as long as you carry a bit of ballast over the back wheels and go gently with the clutch.

Since there is a lot of semi-arid country in southern Africa, desert racing is a popular sport. Most of it is over short circuits on farmland (old maize fields and corners of cattle ranches), but these can still be hazardous. I watched one competitor limp home with his front suspension smashed as a result of hitting a rock hidden in long grass.

Desert racing attracts the usual 4x4 pickups. Some are tuned up basic vehicles, but others are mid-engined works chassis that just happen to have a lightweight version of a production truck wrapped round them. These are expensive, but so are the deceptively crude-looking sand racing vehicles shaped a bit like dragsters. The elite class of these vehicles sports driver-controlled shock systems and motors with double spark plugs per cylinder like an aero engine. They are rear-wheel drive, with differential braking like a tractor - a bit like steering a twin-screw power boat.

This two-day race, run over village paths through scrubland around Botswana's capital city, Gaborone, is southern Africa's big annual 4x4 event. It attracts all classes of competitor, from young enduro bikers to professional works teams. The first year I tried photographing it, I used a compact camera with a 105mm zoom lens. Even in bright light, shutter speeds were slow - and the soggy response to pressing the shutter forced me to find spots where I was facing vehicles turning just in front of me. I lay down on the ground for a worm's-eye view, ready to roll to one side if it looked as if the driver wasn't going to make the turn properly. Even using this basic equipment, I got a few shots which made up in excitement for the lack of technical quality of the image.

In 2002, I used a Canon AE-1 with a zoom lens rather better than the one on the compact. This time; I stood alongside a fast bit of track, setting the lens at 85mm and panning as the vehicles approached, finishing by pointing the lens downwards to avoid the shower of sand as each vehicle went past. To get a good idea of what it was like, take a look at this Best in the Desert 2008 Parker 425

Exciting and difficult, but I managed a small number of pics with the right bit sharp. The Canon pics were better and I managed to scan them at a higher resolution, so I uploaded the best two to CafePress and stuck them on t-shirts, caps, mugs, buttons and things. Take a look . If you or your kids want to be a little different from the crowd, you my even be tempted to buy something.