VIII Encuentro Nacional, Benissa 2011

 

Well, I think I can sum up this event in one word...AWESOME!!!! ;)

The Land Rover club of Spain (CLRTTE) does a couple of annual gatherings, one of them is the "Nacional" and the other one is the "Iberico" which is held every other year in Spain (the other years in Portugal).

This meeting is a great way of meeting Land Rover people from all over the country.

This year, there was a lot of activities including offroad routes and offroad circuits, with great food and assorted activities for everyone.

We had a lot of fun and it's always great to meet people you have been hanging with online, nice to have faces for the nicknames...

First, I was nicely surprised by the number of Land Rovers and Santanas, from all over Spain, it's always nice to check all types of Landys with all kinds of preparations.

I see Land Rovers....

 
 
 
 
 

There was some stuff for kids too, my older one going up high...

 

But again, "I see Land Rovers..."

 
 
 
 
 
 

This is the Defender I want to get one day, a D90, Td4 Puma, a man can dream, right? ;)

 

So now, some pictures of our runs, my 2 girls were into it and had a great time.
We did 2 runs, one Saturday of the easy Green circuit and then Sunday of both the easy and the medium one (the Red circuit)... not bad for street tires, and of course, I didn't try the hard one(the black circuit) with my stock(ish) Disco.

 
 
 
 
 
I think all the tires should be on the ground, right?
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Static mud concept #2
 
The girls and the dog working out with a nice background of... you guessed it, Land Rovers!
 
A happy family! We all had fun, hanging with all sorts of nice people.
 
Finally, I met Suri, I sense we'll share a few routes in the future!
 

The only "carnage" I experienced was a loose rear bumper cap, both sidesteps got a couple of "bumps" and of course a little mud here and there, but nothing too serious.
That's most of it, thank you for reading!


Don't forget to check the CLRTTE website for more pictures and stories...

Alcaraz with some friends from CLRTTE

Well,

We had a blast! what a great day, great weather, great people... such a pleasure to meet fellow Land Rover enthusiasts in Alcaraz.

We arrived at Alcaraz at 9am, a little while after the introductions and greetings, we took off to the mountains.

Funny enough, for being a Land Rover gathering only 3 Land Rovers showed up, my 300Tdi disco, a Td5 Disco and a Td5 Defender 130 (very cool by the way...), the rest were some of those "other" 4x4s :P

All the way to the snack break was smooth with all sorts of terrain to entertain us:

This is the place where La Mancha ends and the Sierra de Alcaraz begins...

My photographer for this trip, working hard (and having quite some fun)

The 130 going up the hill, very nice setup:

Is that snow? we had such a gorgeous day, I didn't expect to see any snow... wait! are we heading that way?

Making new friends, is what Land Rovers is about...

Group picture

Briefing about the trip, by Elpana, our local guy. Many, many thanks to him for organizing this and sharing his knowledge of the area with us!

Group picture, a bunch of people with a love for nature and exploring our world.

What is this? foam? NO, it's *SNOW*, cool... it's not Shaver Lake Snow Run but it was a lot of fun!!!!

Volcano (the name my daughters gave the 300Tdi) behave great, despite the road tires and no lift (yet)

The white stuff

Static mud concept #1

White stuff...

Here some pictures "borrowed" from dcortesv from the LR club:

What's this? *stuck*? and the best prepared Land Rover non the less with those 36 and a half? mmmmm and that is not a Toyota, is a heavily modified Land Rover pulling the 130 :)

Some serious hole full of snow over there... nothing a little pull can't fix.

Pretty rocks worth checking out

We have just passed some interesting mud puddles on the far end of the trail...

Water falls in Los Batanes...

Then we went for lunch to some local restaurant, good food, great company, some tourism around Alcaraz with visit to the castle ruins and everything.

Overall, a great day, thanks every one and especially to elpana for making this happen.