Land Rover’s Onelife magazine showcases stories from around the world that celebrate inner strength and the drive to go Above and Beyond.
For this issue of Onelife we visited Maneybhanjang in the Indian Himalaya, where Land Rover Series Is and IIs rule the roost, we followed the north star to the Land Rover Ice Academy in Arjeplog, Sweden, which offers thrilling ice driving action and bring you the story of outdoorsman Monty Halls and his family who are out with a Discovery for a scenic escape in Ireland.
NEVER STOP DISCOVERING
NEVER STOP DISCOVERING For anyone who travels, there is something special about a border. It represents a moment of transition between two worlds, a single step that crosses from one environment to another, one that invariably heightens the senses and enriches the travelling experience. And for me, there is no finer border than the one between the land and the sea. Coastlines have always held a certain magic throughout the history of travel and exploration, and this one – the convoluted, honeycombed, endlessly variable shores of Donegal – holds more wonder than most. Donegal is the north-western-most county in Ireland, and as such represents the last point of landfall in western Europe. It is one of those rare places where you can stand with your heels on a great continent, and your toes in a vast ocean. I have a little bit of history here, as Malin Head in Donegal – the very northern tip of Ireland – was where in 2011 I had one of the most memorable marine encounters of my entire life. It was here that for one wondrous day hundreds of basking sharks ploughed across the limpid waters of the bay beneath the glowering cliffs of the headland – an unforgettable aggregation of the second-largest fish on earth, drawn here by current, tide, plankton, and a sun that shone in a cloudless sky. I was returning seven years later with my family, to share with them not only the wonders of the coastline but also the green hinterland of one of Ireland’s wildest and most sparsely populated counties. My own rather tenuous connection with Ireland is based on a deep and abiding affection for the country and its people, generated during the filming of the BBC series The Great Irish Escape several years ago. But this paled into insignificance next to the ancestral links of my wife Tam, something that was clearly manifested in our daughters Isla and Molly, the latter in particular undeniably a flame-haired distillation of that Celtic lineage. And so it seemed only appropriate that we took the kids to a county where the waters were wild, the heartland was ancient, and Irish culture was nurtured and celebrated. It would be our gift to Isla and Molly, albeit a fairly self-indulgent one. It’s no small matter packing for a week away, given the unique demands (and they are demands, let’s make no bones about that) of little people on long journeys. And thus, the Tardis-like capacity of the Land Rover Discovery – the car chosen for our small family adventure – was tested to the full as we found room for it all; a colossal tetra of cases, backpacks, buckets and spades, and – in the middle of everything – a small holdall for me. We were also towing a boat – there was absolutely no way I was visiting over 700 miles of Donegal coastline without the ability to launch into the Atlantic to visit offshore islands and hidden coves. The towing experience was a delight (and there’s a rare sentence); Land Rover have really thrown some resources at making sure this otherwise stressful experience is entirely safe and (dare I say it) great fun. Indeed the only issue is occasionally forgetting that you’re towing anything at all. Before we knew it we were arriving at our first destination, clear-eyed, sane, and still married. Our exploration of Donegal would last a week, which is no time at all to experience what the place has to offer. This is, after all, the location voted the world’s number one travel destination by National Geographic on their ’cool list’ of 2017. But we had tried to view the trip through the eyes of a six- and four-year-old. What experiences would generate memories to last a lifetime? What would fire their imaginations? We assumed that fine restaurants and sleepy boutique hotels would not be high on their agenda – although Donegal has plenty of those. We wanted to get down and dirty, to get tanned, salty and sandy. As such The Discovery unloads the Halls and their bodyboards onto Rossnowlagh Beach. In Tullagh Bay, horsepower gets swapped for horses and a seaside canter 54
RIGHT XXXXXX "WHAT WOULD FIRE THEIR IMAGINATIONS AND GENERATE MEMORIES FOR A LIFETIME?”
