Do not drive onto a shingle beach!

Well went fishing least night on Seaham hall beach, Co Durham. Learnt a lesson. Basically you can drive your ca ronto the prom (not officially) but its narrow and difficult to do a 3 point turn. At the end is a ramp which runs down to a shingle beach with large stones.

I thought ooh i have a 4x4 if i just drive onto the stones i will be alble to turn around easier than if i do it on the prom! Wrong decision. Car dug itself into the shingle, stones chucked up by the wheels. I eventually managed to drive myself out after about 10 mins stuck but it was touch and go. I nearly asked a bloke parked on the prom in a xtrail for a tow!

I think i have probably chipped my alloys quite a bit , which i will check soon and the clutch was smelling a bit!

Note though the tide doesnt reach where i drove onto the beach so there was no danger of me getting swamped, if there had been no way would i have driven onto the beach!

at least it got you out!
were you using the sand programme?

Do we need a 'shingle' terrain setting ?

Isn't shingle just 'big sand' ?

Don't you have foot well mats? You could have laid "sand" mats to get traction and saved scuffed alloys and chipped paint.

(09-11-2012 10:36am)cjfp Wrote:  Do we need a 'shingle' terrain setting ?

Isn't shingle just 'big sand' ?

It was a mixture of stones, not sand from small golf ball size stones to stones maybe the size of a fist or a little bigger. It was totally dry. I put the car in sand setting but it didnt seem to like it!

Anyway I just washed the car and the damage to the wheels is nowhere near as bad as i thought, one tiny chip to one of the alloys, hardly visible.

I suppose i did get out without assistance but I felt like an absolute tool at the time.