It was a very grown up stag do: we were all 30-40 something and spent the day at Mountain Mayhem, doing Hover Crafting and Tomcar Off Roading. The hovercraft were awesome fun, very highly recommended, and the off road driving was unlike anything I’ve ever done before. Checkout some of the pictures.
There’s just something about, being strapped into a Tomcar (what can only be described as a roll cage on wheels), and driving it down a clearly too steep slope, into a flowing stream. Several things happen in quick succession when you do this. First, as you shoot over the lip of the bank, you think WTF am I doing, I’m about to die!?! Then as the front of the “vehicle” smashes into the water, you get thrown forward due to the rapid deceleration and the safety harness seems to physically hold you in just the perfect position to receive the full force of the wave of filthy water that’s coming over the front to meet you head on. Straight in the face and down your front, the frigid water gives you an instant soaking
Of course this is the critical bit, full throttle is required if you want any hope of getting out further down the stream and not being left stranded in 2 feet of water. And as the stream ejects your Tomcar at high velocity, you lose all visibility other than the colour of the sky, with only a vague memory of where the course goes once you crest the top of the bank, and you once again feel the illusion of control given by having all 4 wheels back on dry land.
One of the scariest bits however, initially sounds pretty tame: it’s just a ditch they cut in the field which you drive down one end, along the bottom, and up and out the far end. Easy right?
So let me first explain that you’ve just come shooting down the hill, definitely the fastest part of the track, and you’ve had to make a 90 degree right hand turn at full speed in order to line up with the ditch, trying desperately to control the back end as you can feel it skipping out on the wet grass. You note at this point that you can’t actually see the bottom of the ditch, as it’s 6 foot deep, with high unyielding sides and full of water. You remember the warning of the instructor, that if you don’t line up perfectly, you’ll hit the sides and roll the Tomcar for sure, ending up upside-down in the ditch, and most likely, underwater.
The brakes of course are useless on this surface and so you leave your success or failure to fate, and as you career off the edge and descend into the abyss below, you remember one last detail: they call this obstacle: “The Grave!”
