| Trophee Cevenol |
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Every year for the past 20 years more than 150 hard-core off-road vehicles have congregated in the cute village of Les Vans deep in the Cevennes National Park in southern France to take part in what most believe to be the toughest non-competitive recreational off-roading event available anywhere in Europe. The Trophee Cevenol includes rock crawling, mud-plugging and rut-riding, an event deliberately designed to give hard-core highly-modified off-road cars somewhere to try out their enhanced equipment. How steep are the climbs? I can give you some idea, since I've been doing hard-core off-roading for over thirty years and even I was impressed. I was driving a lifted ARB-equipped Wrangler with photographer Pete at my side when a Land Rover up ahead turned off the track and lurched up such a steep slope that it nearly fell over backwards. "Ho, ho," I said, "look, Pete, he's gone the wrong way." Pete, who was navigating and had the route book open on his lap, said: "No, that's the way we go." It was, too. Half way up, as I struggled to find enough grip for the B F Goodriches to stay in touch with the ground, Pete added: "You remember this, don't you? We drove down it yesterday." I remembered, all right - it was so steep that the Wrangler had threatened to lock up its wheels in first low and we'd had to stand on the bulkhead to stop ourselves falling out of the seats. Rocks? One year they'd found a boulder the size of an elephant for us to ease our way down off, another there was one the size of a double-storey house and so steeply angled that we had to approach it sideways to avoid slamming the winch bumper into it. The organisers had also found a lovely "vee" for us to drive through (above, left) which had many a car slipping over on to its side to the accompaniment of loud cheers from the onlookers. A fast-flowing river crossing one year was so deep that a lifted, mightily-modified YJ simply floated away and sank...
The Cevenol is a three-day event, with a different route to drive each day. Entrants are divided into a total of nine groups, three groups to each route each day, the groups starting an hour apart to reduce the chance of "traffic jams" at difficult sections. Jams are inevitable. The Cevenol is intended as a playing field for highly modified cars, but the accent is all on friendliness and team spirit, and there's nothing to stop people campaigning standard vehicles, as some do purposely on the quite acceptable grounds that overcoming the serious Cevenol obstacles is a greater test of their own driving skill; flat-fender Jeeps are a regular sight, amazing to see in action over such daunting terrain. For all that, there are some ridiculously long, steep climbs with severe axle-twisting ruts and rocks that many a standard car can't manage without a little bit of help from a winch. Let's face it, there are some obstacles that more than a few highly-modified vehicles have needed to winch themselves through. As I've already mentioned elsewhere, we did watch in awe one year as a bog-standard old Land Rover 90 pick-up plodded its way round with little fuss, but that was an impressively well-driven rarity... Driving skill can play just as big a part in getting a highly-modified car around - there are folk who still freak out at at the sight of steep, twisting, deeply-rutted climbs and tend to use too much right foot in too low a gear with the result that even body lifts and locking diffs can't guarantee traction. On one afternoon the action switches to an area we've nicknamed the devil's playground because it's a superb hollow in the Cevennes highlands hundreds of metres deep and a couple of kilometres across; it it's been raining even getting down into it is a nerve-racking feat because the muddied soil gets as slippery as ice. Here there are several of those awkward axle-twisting climbs, with many twists and turns in them, many drivers getting themselves into difficulty by relying too heavily on locking differentials which may get them over humps and bumps, but can cause havoc with the steering when you're trying to aim the car accurately between boulders. This event is a great one to really get to grips with the technicalities of serious off-road driving. Nextyear will see the 21st edition of the Trophee Cevenol, running in early May and possibly with a tough Prologue section to whet the appetite for the remaining three days of action. The event is organised by the French group Grands Randonneurs Motorises and you'll need to budget at least a grand to cover the entry fee and the cost of fuel, ferry crossing, accommodation and food. It may seem expensive but many who've tried it go back year after year because it's such a seriously exciting off-road kick that it's virtually impossible to resist. Save up and treat it as a holiday - the countryside .is gorgeous, the food and wine superb, the atmosphere of comradeship is fantastic.
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