Cover story
 We tackled the ever-tougher Mille Rivieres in our surprisingly competent Cherokee
Tucked in among the queue consisting mainly of heavily-modified old Toyota Land Cruisers and not-so-old Jeep Wranglers our old bog-standard Cherokee looked as if it wouldn’t stand a chance over some of the more difficult obstacles, but it managed to clear much of the difficult terrain with consummate ease, on occasion drawing cheers of encouragement from onlookers, and where it did need winch assistance to clear a particularly massive chunk of rock we were comforted to see that many well-prepared Wranglers also had to default to a wire rope tug to clear the same obstacle.
That rocky descent was a highlight of the first day of the three-day event, but it was by no means the most interesting section. Day two started easily enough, the trail rising to the high plateau of the Cevennes and into a winter scene of flurrying snow and thick mist. There wasn’t enough of the white stuff to hinder progress, but it added a pleasing Christmassy atmosphere to the proceedings. This first part of the trail was scenic rather than difficult, and included a vertigo-inducing traverse over a viaduct running hundreds of metres over a deep valley. But the trail suddenly took an interesting turn, including a steep climb up a rocky mountainside where the rocks took the form of a flight of stairs, some of them rising a good sixteen vertical inches. It was a particularly good obstacle for trying out the new second-generation B.F.Goodrich Mud Terrain tyres – with a pattern that’s noticeably less chunky than the famed original, the new tyres have been designed with the twin aims of reducing noise on the highway and improving grip on rock surfaces. They worked superbly on this particularly awkward section, helped by the extended tread pattern that wraps round into the sidewall area and enhances the amount of grip available when running at low pressures.
We’d already found the Mille Rivieres to be tougher than expected, so we were naturally a little nervous about what to expect on the final day, which promised to be the most technically demanding yet. It didn’t disappoint – rocky gulleys to cross, steep ascents among close-set trees, and a couple of massive boulders to traverse; the boulders so big that very few cars, even the heavily modified ones, managed to surmount them without winch assistance. The Cherokee managed to clear most without help, though it did flatten the end of its exhaust pipe on one rock, lost a tail lamp cluster against another and needed to be hauled off one boulder when it ended up teetering on its main crossmember. Still, it got us home in one piece and apart from a few dents and scratches is running as sweetly as ever. The Mille Rivieres is organized by the Grands Randonneurs Motorises, the same group that runs the Croisiere Blanche and deadly-serious Trophy Cevenol off-road events in southern France. With an entry fee of around £500 per car the event isn’t cheap – partly because of the poor exchange rate against the Euro – and British entrants still have to add the cost of a ferry, fuel and accommodation, but everyone who made it through the three days of demanding off-roading agreed it’s an adventure worth repeating.
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To any casual onlooker it would have seemed like a precipitous stretch of exposed rock jutting out of the mountainside. To the fifty off-road cars taking part in the Mille Rivieres, however, it was just another section of the 300-mile route leading through the Cevennes National Park. There was a lot of crashing and banging as the cars lurched, often waving a wheel or two in the air, from boulder to boulder, most of them catching a rear cross-member, bumper or towbar on the final step before the sharp left-hander where the rocky outcrop eventually gives way to a more or less simple muddy track.
That rocky climb set the adrenaline going and prepared the drivers for what looked like a simple climb up a steep forested hillside. Part of the problem was that the track zig-zagged between the trees, some so close together as to leave only inches on either side of a car – making it impossible to substitute sheer momentum for straightforward grip. The other part of the problem was that the event also attracts a good entry of trail bikers, and the motorcycles – with only one-wheel drive and high-revving engines ruling out a slow and steady approach to the problem – ended up churning the normally quite stable forest floor into such a soft shin-deep mulch that many of the four-wheel drives had trouble getting any grip at all. Toyotas, Jeeps and Land Rovers all needed winch support to get started up this climb, but to our great delight the Cherokee made it in one and got all the way to the top without outside help.
Our little convoy made it safely to the big celebration that evening at St Privat de Vallongue, about 160km of off-road track south of the event’s starting point at Chambon sur Lignon, the party spirit enhanced by the freely flowing wine at the hunter-style meal of boar stew marking the event’s 20th anniversary – though the less said about the musical accompaniment the better.