Sorry, I forgot to include the chronicle of the outing:

Another day, another trip....

This is our second outing of the season... the first one was three weeks ago, and you haven't heard about it because it was a day to forget: it was the first day after I had had my G-Wagen fully repainted and I turned it over....

OK. Back to the story: Today it was my time to navigate Freyer in his G300 Cabrio and Iñigo in his pile-of-rubbish 300 GD Turbodiesel. We drove to Ayllón, in Segovia and drove some 150 Kms off the road plus some 100 kms to get there and back..

After the generous rains the clay-based soil was extemely slippery... loads of muds and enormous puddles to play with... we did not want to mess to much around after the eventful last outing to enable Iñigo to play with his newer toy.

After lunch we crossed the famous La Quesera pass in our way to Wadi-al-Hajara (وادي الحجارة), which was beautiful at this time of the year, with its oaks and beeches in full autumm atire preparing themselves for the winter in constrast with the green from the pine trees, all of it distorted by the rain and the fog. It is a privilege to have this so close to Madrid (Paris has Disneyland but we, Madrilians have something much better!).

To sparkle it a little bit, we decided to wade the Jarama near Matallana, to avenge Iñigo's hydraulicked engine las winter. So there we went, attacking the crossing from the north. The way down to the river was extremely slippery, so much so that we could not believe that only last year we rescued Iñigo's poweless G300 Turbodiesel up the hill.

After some prevarication and in view that Freyer's G insisted on sliding sideways on the trickiest of points, we opted for an alternative way down some rocks, which at least offered some grip.

Then we crossed the Jarama river without problems to report and prepared to climb up to Matallana...

As usual, the very slippery and steep hill was a real challenge, with very wet and clay peppered with slate. There is also a left and then right double corner which completely destroys any momentum that one might be able to build up in the run from the river and makes the climb all the more difficult.

Freyer attacked the hill with me on the passenger seat... he was tempted to stop midways to check for Iñigo, but I convinced him to drive all the way up... it would not have been a good idea to curtail Iñigo's momentum in his underpowered 300 GD by parking in the middle...

Then we jumped down the hill to check on Iñigo´s attack on the Mattalana's hill.... First thing he discovers is that his front locker lever is loose... second his that the stopping power of his handbrake is similar to that of an openly gay policeman.... not looking great, I'm afraid...

After a few successive tries by Freyer and Iñigo, we dicided to air the tyres down to 0.8 bar. We needed some balast too to get some precious grip so all three of us fat blokes got inside and gave it a go... we attempted it at once with the engine screaming, second low and rear locker, only to get to a halt after we had lost all momentum after the left-right double turn. We figured that we were at the very end of the trickiest point, but, how do we start moving in a 40º degree slippery incline with no hand brake in a manual gearbox G-Wagen?

Easy... we got Iñigo (in the passenger seat) pressing the throttle with his left hand, while Freyer controlled steering wheel, foot brake and clutch... while I, in the back seat duly reminded the pair that in as much as real men went to the whorehouse with condoms, dick, and the will of using both, real G-men, went to do some off roading with functioning lockers, handbrake and the will of using them both....

In the end, we managed to climb the famous Matallana hill, sans front locker and handbrake, but with an engine screaming like a bunch of male elephants in season.

We loved the adrenaline pumping at the top of the hill (see picture)

A wondeful off-roading day indeed.

Pics in the usual place: http://picasaweb.google.com/mortinson3/Ayllon02