For anyone who knows Jaap

Well, this section of the forum is called RANDOM STUFF ...


A Dutch friend of mine called Jaap rang me at 10.30 this morning to say, “Hi Tom, we are stuck on a Greenlane, can you help rescue me?”  Always willing to help out a friend in trouble, I said, “No problem, where are you?” His reply was ‘interesting’ to say the least.

It appears his Land Rover 130 was stuck in deep mud on a byway called The Broomway, a stretch of sand/mud which runs 6 miles between the mainland off the Essex coast and Foulness Island … you really couldn’t make it up!!!

The thing was, as the byway is in a tidal area off the southeast coast of England, and me 2.5 hours away in The Midlands with no winch, there was no option but to call the Essex Coastguard. As I’m still talking to them, they got out their binoculars and instantly spotted him – wey hey!!!! - so immediately mounted a rescue.

Later I will post the outcome on here, meantime have a look at the Wiki description - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broomway - note the sub-section titled ‘Notoriety’. At least I could be safe in the knowledge the Coastguard were on the job, so no lives were at risk.

I also found this official document outling use of The Broomway - http://www.shoeburyness.qinetiq.com/public-access/Documents/INFORMATION%20FOR%20PEOPLE%20WISHING%20TO%20USE%20THE%20BROOMWAY%20PUBLIC%20RIGHT%20OF%20WAY.pdf

Remind me, it's not 1st April is it?  


A couple of piccies of Jaap and his pride 'n' joy on dry land (well, kind of) whilst off-roading in Holland.



Yes, the red warning triangle was my idea!

All sorted! Jaap phoned me to say that at noon he managed to winch himself to safety, just minutes before the coastguard arrived with a tractor. All's well that ends well!   

That's good news glad he managed to recover himself.

Didn't realise he was in the UK shame we didn't see him at Billing last week.

Yep, I never knew either. Crazy Dutch!

Who do you call.....

If you're in the middle of nowhere.
The only one I can think of is Tom: he knows almost every Landrover in Brittain.
Best chance of getting help, without calling the police or worse: in this case the army.
And, indeed, he managed to get hold of some who could help us out (Coastguard, just who whe didn't want to see).

As you already read whe managed to get on dry ground ourself. Unfortunally we already send the kids to shore to try to get help. The coastguard was so kind to keep the children on shore and prevent them from coming back to our vehicles. So we had no other option as to get onshore too. Coastguard then very nice and demanding escorted us of Foulness island.

We managed to get our cars out of the mud with the help of some very strange Brittish items. Concrete blocks with steel eye in the middle of the sea. Perfect winchcabel mounting place. With all the lines and straps and the winchcabel double it still didn't work. We almost gave in. In the end the flexible rope made the difference. Winched till the engine almost stopped, than full throttle and with help of the energy stored in the rope we made 2 yards. Exactly the energy of the rope made the difference. After about 5 times we made a little less weak underground.

If you ever want to drive this byway, please make sure you drive at least 200 yards further from the coast as the map shows. Especially as you pass a stone briddleway halfway.(the old crossing is deadly)

My excuses to Tom i didn't respond sooner.

And as you may see in the pictures that don't show (no idea why) the 133 was at home, we were with 2 109