GEARBOX Hill, Reservoir Road and Wedding Ring Loop don’t sound exactly des res but for the likes of Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Ray Mears they are home from home.
The places can be found on the Eastnor Castle estate in the shadow of the Malvern Hills – an unlikely spot to be steeped in automotive history.
For the past 50 years the 5,000 acres around the Regency mansion built in the style of a Gothic castle have been the proving ground for Land Rover and the estate has gained a reputation as the world’s ultimate off-road experience.
Enthusiasts from across the globe flock to Eastnor’s unforgiving trails two miles north of Ledbury in Herefordshire to put themselves and their 4x4 vehicles to the test on the same slopes where breakthroughs such as hill descent control were honed to perfection.
In all there are some 38 miles of tracks through the woods and parkland of Eastnor where every type of Land Rover to date has been taken to the limit.
Last through was the Range Rover Evoque but from the Series ll vehicle of the 1960s, every version of the Range Rover, Discovery, Freelander and Defender has been given the Eastnor treatment.
As Spen King, chief programme engineer of the Range Rover from 1967 to 1989, once said: “If it can get around the Eastnor estate, it can go anywhere.”
‘Passing out’ at Eastnor is now the standard for every Land Rover and Range Rover and the development work continues, often in secret using ‘mules’ to disguise the next generation of model which will be built either at the company’s Solihull or Halewood factories.
Such a vehicle is a G-registration black van used to develop the original Freelander in the early 1990s – it’s a 4x4 underneath with the body of an Austin Maestro van bolted on top.
One of 22 prototypes they were nicknamed Mad Max vans by the Land Rover test team who over the years also gave names to parts of the estate which have now passed into 4x4 folklore.
The steep slope of Gearbox Hill is where transmissions and differentials were tested often to destruction, Reservoir Road is a deeply flooded mud bath and Wedding Ring Loop is where one unfortunate engineer lost his wedding ring during a test drive – it was never found.
The Maestro mule has just been back at Eastnor along with a host of Land Rovers old and new to mark the 50th anniversary of the company’s association with the Hervey-Bathurst family who run the castle and estate.
It began when Major Ben Hervey-Bathurst, himself an off-road fan and then president of the Rover Midlands’ Owners Club, invited Land Rover to try some of its vehicles around the estate.
The Land Rover engineers arrived, found conditions ideal and from that moment Land Rover and Eastnor became synonymous – and not just for vehicle development.
Over the years the mud, ruts, slopes and water filled ‘bomb holes’ which make up the proving ground have been used for training for events such as the Camel Trohpy, the G4 Challenge and for off-road workouts by explorers including Ranulph Fiennes and Ray Mears.
Fiennes recalls: “I was intrigued by this estate that my friends at Land Rover were talking about. ‘It’s liked the jungles of the Nile,’ they told me.
“I laughed. Until I got stuck there myself one afternoon, and now, every time I get behind the wheel of my Land Rover I thank the Hervey-Bathursts for opening the estate to the company 50 years ago.
“I would have been stuck a lot more if it wasn’t for the marvellous engineering work done by Land Rover at Eastnor.”
Getting stuck at Eastnor was an everyday occurrence for novice off-roaders but now with electronic devices such as traction control and Land Rover’s Terrain Response system the latest models can champion the roughest conditions in a way unimaginable 50 years ago – as we discovered driving the new Evoque and other Range Rovers around Eastnor.
Such technological developments were world firsts and have proved the worth of Eastnor’s tough terrain testing to Land Rover drivers the world over.
At the anniversary event Land Rover engineers Geof Miller and Bill Morris – who first tested a 129-inch wheelbase prototype on the estate in 1961 – were reunited with many of the vehicles they helped to develop, along with Roger Crathorne, who when in charge of the Land Rover Experience, played a pivotal role in pioneering the HDC system on the Freelander.
“Eastnor is the stuff of Land Rover legends,” said John Edwards, Land Rover global brand director. “From the original Land Rover Series models right the way through the Range Rover Evoque launched this year – this piece of British countryside has been central to the development of them all.”