Sport In A Free Land
by Mike Grundon (27 Sep 04)

I breathed a deep sigh of contentment and opened my eyes to the sun. Toes curling in the dune, I gazed out across the bay to the blue-misted peaks of Slievetooey and Crockuna. It was the perfect afternoon - still, warm and silent. Okay, so that achingly beautiful girl walking alone, sandals in her hand, wasn't paying the blindest bit of attention to me, and I had just spent all morning driving to get out here to the far west of Donegal, but the world was perfect. Indeed, the driving had been part of the fun.

Another bite at my apple, and I looked back to the beach access track where I'd parked the Freelander Sport, and smiled. Despite my initial reservations about whether or not it would comfortably cope with the epic journey I'd planned, after 1500 miles I'd become impressed and even attached to the little thing.

Land Rover purists may balk at the concept of this model. It's basically a three-door that's been given more of an on-road bias with bigger than normal 18" alloy wheels and slightly lowered and stiffened suspension. The company says it's the "sharpest handling and sportiest Land Rover production model ever," and even if that's not really saying much, it could upset the dyed-in-the-wool mud-plugger.

Munching on the Braeburn at the beach, I thought back to the last week which had taken me from high-speed drones along Scottish motorways, sweeps through lochside dashes and mountain passes, and on to sun-dappled meanderings along unclassified lanes and a couple of firm dirt tracks. I'd driven it onto the ferry for Belfast, pushed on down to go hiking in the Mourne Mountains, taken my cousin, his wife and two kids out for the day, and spent a lot of time alone with it, glancing down at the map on the passenger seat and navigating across the most interesting parts of northern Irish countryside I could find.

It had done everything I asked of it, despite being short on doors and limited on cargo space. There was quite a bit of me in it by now too.

The loam in the floor carpets was made up of leaf mould from the banks of Loch Ness, river grit from near Loch Awe, and beach sand from the coast of Caithness.

There was a pebble from the scree of the Devil's Coachroad in the Mournes, and it was delicately scented with a rich mixture of woodsmoke off my camping clothes and the fragrant scent of Loch Lomondside bog myrtle from the sprig stuffed into the dash-top cup holder.

Basically it would need a damned good clean before I put it back to Land Rover, but this for me was the essence of the name Freelander. The car had opened up the country for me.

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