SGRC Evoque friendly Green-laning

I know there aren't too many Evoques out there yet to be taking them off road but here is what I got up to today with the Scottish Green Road Club on their 2nd club outing which was to Killin in the lower Highlands about 90 minutes drive north of Glasgow/ Edinburgh at the west end of Loch Tay.

Very Freelander friendly (so an Evoque will cope easily) and don't let the sight of all those Defenders and Discos put you off, those guys just aren't into mudlarking. The routes the club drives are all on private land, inaccessible to the general public and all on laid tracks.
And what a cracking day to be going off into the hills in your Landie or Rangie............... very pleasant up on the tops, no midges but still a chill in the air out of the sun (but 20c+ in the full sun!) and still snow on the higher mountains too







15 other Land Rover products were also out for the day


Nothing difficult, no need for low ratio unless you really wanted to play, hard packed gravel with the odd pothole and tarred sections below the hydro-electric dam. AND I got sunburned!

Stunning part of the world Tim. Don't think it can be bettered on a day like today.

Stunning scenery but the next outing on May 1 will be even better if the weather stays like this because it will be in the hills above the north end of Loch Lomond.

It looks like you could drive a 2wd vehicle on those tracks, in good weather.

You could - you could take a low slung sports car over them too! The idea of these "gentle" drives out into the hills is to see the scenery and not get any scratches or dings. They also get cars that would normally be mobile shopping trolleys or school run cars out of their normal city environment. You need only minimal offroading ability at this time of the year but when we do the same runs in the winter they can become sheets of ice and buried deep under snow which adds some excitement. It isn't everybody who owns a Land Rover/Jeep/ SUV who wants to get up to their knees in mud and then spend the next week washing it out from under the car.
The other people who come along are the owners of some quite beautifully rebuilt and veteran Land Rovers - there were two superbly rebuilt Series 2 station wagons there yesterday as these days out are ideal for them. They needed their low ratio gearboxes to get up and down some of the hills - the more modern cars with good engine braking and high torque engines didn't use their low ratio gear box once. It was the first run in a long time that I have been on where no Freelanders turned up.

One other thing I should also point out is that in Scotland we have very strict "right to roam" and trespass laws. You can walk just about anywhere - even on private property BUT you must not do any damage. You cannot take a horse, car or push bike onto private land here without specific permission of the land owner. Scotland, unlike England and Wales, has no public rights of way that you can drive (IMHO a good thing too as most of the rights of way in England are being destroyed by 4x4 owners and MotoX/ trails bikers using totally unsuitable tyres in the wrong weather conditions) and apart from forests owned by Forest Enterprise (not private forests), surrounding reservoirs and dams and in the National Parks there is very little publicly owned land - we do have a national land registry that has been operating since god was a boy so it is quite easy to find out who owns which land, getting their permission to access it with an SUV or motorbike however can be a different matter.