Bob Bell's Memoirs of the Austin Champ 3

After two weeks or so of wandering the shelves at Minehead Public Library, the Head Librarian, a slight and kind man named Mr. Perks, who wore half-moon glasses perched upon the tip of his nose … perfect positioning for looking down and reading … became convinced that it was my destiny to pursue a lifelong career in the library, and that accordingly I should seek a course at Bristol University and pursue a degree that would propel me to undreamt of heights of proficiency and expertise in the library world.

I was horrified by his belief in me. This was not something I had anticipated in my dream of opening Blue Mountain Books, the future stronghold of  bohemian culture in West Somerset. Not at all. The idea of going to university had never occurred to me, and while I did truly have a love of books, that romance was far removed from studying library practice, and most certainly and indubitably did not lend itself to a lifetime of being closeted within four walls, no matter how many books those walls enclosed. 

As I hemmed and hawed over the following few days, trying to avoid the subject, I was accosted again by Mr Perks, peering over his specs.’ ‘Er Bob, I’ve been hearing a rumor around town … ‘er, well, something about you and a bookshop? Did I hear wrong? Is this something you are considering?’ 

Oh jeez, if the cat was not out of the bag, it was wriggling about pretty energetically. I affected great surprise, and pumped Mr Perks for details. ‘A bookshop? Wow. Me opening a bookshop? Heck. Don’t see how I could do that, who told you that?’ And proceeded to tell him the truth about my financial situation, which was probably the first really truthful thing I had uttered so far, other than the very real existence of my exam certificates … about which I had still not yet been challenged. ‘I don’t have the money to open a box, Mr Perks, let alone a bookshop. How weird that this rumor is going around. Kinda hilarious really.’

Recounting all of this to Brad that evening, he replied with the news that the call he had put in to Penguin Books the week before, from his landladies’ telephone, had been returned by a Mr. O’Nions, Penguin’s area rep. He wanted to set up an appointment with us. We were torn between telling him that it was all a ghastly mistake and on the other hand, a reluctance to abandoning our dream of a bohemian stronghold. 

So, wisely, we did nothing. Every few days at the library, the possibility of a new bookshop opening in Minehead was brought up by one of the customers. It seemed the rumor mill was in overdrive around the town. And every few days Brad’s landlady would catch him in the hall and tell ‘That Mr O’Nions called again yesterday … won’t you give him a call. He sounds like such a nice man.’ Of course he sounded like a nice man, he was an unrelenting salesman, it was his job to sound like a nice man. 

Every day added one more plate to the now tottering stack we were attempting to juggle, and within four weeks of starting the library job, I handed in my notice. Living a lie takes far too much energy.

So the dream of opening Blue Mountain Books ended, not so much having turned into a nightmare but really and simply because we both woke up to what is known as reality. However, we retained a little proof that the entire episode had not been a figment of our imaginations. We still had the registered trademark from the Board of Trade.

Two major things happened that summer … I met a beautiful blue-eyed blond named Wendy, and by year's end bought the Champ from Brad.

As this story is really about my affinity for jeeps and all their witchery, I won’t go into detail about the other jobs I held during the waning months of 1966 going into 1967 other than to say I took a job at Butlin’s Holiday Camp the following spring.

Wendy and I got married at the Registry Office in Williton. I was 20, she was 18. With the naivety of youth, I had no idea one had to pay to get married, and at the end for the ceremony, I had to bum seven shillings and sixpence from Wendy’s uncle. After the exchange of the vows and the payment for the license, I proudly escorted my bride to the Champ for the eight mile drive to the reception in Minehead. We probably had not gone a mile before I heard the thump thump of a flat tire. The Champ’s tires were 750 x 16’s …. Big and heavy. Fortunately we were close to a lay-by when it occurred; a circumstance that shielded me from the danger of attempting to change the wheel on the very busy main road, which afforded no pavement or sidewalk … just dense hedges on each side of the road. By the time the lug nuts were tightened and the jack lowered, and the flat tire attached to the spare-wheel carrier at the back of the vehicle, my wedding suit was splattered with red mud and grease. It was an auspicious start to our life together, and while my appearance at the reception perhaps did not draw audible gasps from the attendees, I was certainly aware of a plain and indisputable disdain among some of the elderly relatives. 

Wendy and I had taken over the flat that Brad and I had been sharing, and we played host to friends from around the country who would come and stay for a weekend. Among the earlier visitors the next summer were Andrew Collins and Johnny Guy from London, two old school friends. I didn’t have to go into Butlin’s until 11.30 on a Sunday morning, so I proposed a quick trip in the Champ before work. We drove out to Dunster, through the village and took a left down a small lane which led to a ford over the River Avill. I’d been across the ford several times … it was just a few inches deep with a very firm bottom, and the cool thing about it was that it was quite wide, probably about 40 feet. And because of the shallowness of the water, and the firm gravel river bed, it was not a place that one even thought about needing to engage four wheel drive.

Gallox packhorse bridge and the ford at Dunster

It is a pretty crossing, and centuries ago a bridge was built across the river. It was known as a pack-horse bridge, and I had always wondered why, given the shallow crossing, a bridge was needed for pack-horses. Certainly the bridge was perfect for hikers and ramblers … it kept their feet dry no matter the season. 

We approached the water and John and Andrew giggled in anticipation. There was a family crossing the bridge, a couple with three children including a rather bored looking teenager. They stopped to watch our progress as I drove through the river at about ten miles an hour, not wanting to soak our audience, and then, when we about three quarters of the way across, a totally and absolutely unexpected and unforeseen thing happened. 

The Champ plunged down at forty five degrees, the hood disappearing under the water. The river flowed across the Champ, over my knees. 

‘Jesus Bob! The engine is completely under water,’ shouted Andrew who was in the passenger seat, getting just as wet. I reached for the four wheel drive lever, and hit the gas. The front end sank a little lower, but the champ didn’t move forwards. I threw it into reverse, and the rear end sank a little lower. 

Two more hikers had joined the family on the bridge. ‘Put it into four wheel drive,’ one of them helpfully shouted. The other made a comment about the huge rain storm that had occurred a few days ago, a rainstorm that I now remembered. Indeed, it had rained, very hard, for a couple of days,

But surely not enough to carve such a deep channel in the river bed? I glanced at the pack horse bridge, and the reason for its creation now became starkly apparent.

The Champ had been designed by the Army to be capable of deep fording, and indeed the manual, at the foot of every page, carried a quotation to the effect of ‘Regular Servicing is Essential for Successful Fording’. I had read it many times, but had not really absorbed its import. Everything about the Champ was heavy duty. The distributor and ignition wires, to take just one example, were so well designed to keep the water out that it really was a time-consuming task to remove them to change the points or plugs. And there were little caps that one was supposed to screw over the breather holes on items like the generator prior to deep fording. The floors in the driver and passenger compartments had large holes in them to expedite the fast drainage of any water that entered the vehicle. In this situation they greatly helped in filling up the vehicle. With a nod to the Champ’s utilitarian design, both front compartments had wooden duckboards on the floor. No cissy rubber floor mats for the army. Being wood they wanted to float, so Andrew and I had to push down hard with our feet to keep them in place and stop them from floating down the river. And, ah yes, the river. The river which was flowing over the tops of our thighs, streaming and purling across the car. The intake for the air cleaner was situated on the side of the cowl, high up, but not quite out of reach of the rippling water, which every now and then splashed into the intake and the engine would murmur, and miss once or twice, and then pick up again. 

Taking a Champ into deep water the proper way

The crowd on the bridge had by now doubled, the two children beside themselves with delight, and the teenager was now watching the proceedings with a rather malicious grin. He had brightened up considerably. This was more like it. 

We had been there for probably fifteen minutes, with the engine totally submerged, the exhaust pipe underwater, gurgling and bubbling, and I watched the gauges with worry and dread. A remarkable thing was taking place. Despite the engine being underwater, the temperature was rising, alarmingly. I remembered reading in the manual that there was some kind of clutch on the water pump that disengaged when the fan encountered deep water. Evidently the cold rushing waters of the Avill were no match for the heat this engine put out; a heat  that was being absorbed by a now stationary water jacket.

Each time I attempted to drive our way out the deeper we sank. We were stuck, inextricably stuck. Something had to be done. John volunteered to go for help, to see if he could find a farmer with a tractor, or someone with a Land Rover to pull us out. Looking behind him at about thirty feet of water to cross as opposed to about ten in front, he clambered around the windshield and paddled down the hood, pushing off with a determined leap. 

In hindsight, this turned out to be a bad move. 

He landed about three feet in front of the Champ, up to his chest in the river. Obviously the flood channel was a bit wider than we had thought. A huge roar of appreciation went up from the bridge - this was better than the movies. Grimly he made the shore and jogged to the bridge, making his way through the now ecstatic crowd, who parted to allow this dripping wet lunatic to pass through, giving him enough room on the narrow bridge to avoid his brushing up against their nice clean hiking clothes. Andrew and I turned in our seats, all the while stamping down on the wretched duck boards, and watched him disappear up the lane. 

We had now been there for over thirty minutes, and other than the worrisome temperature situation, our predicament kind of stabilized. A few members of the crowd departed, their places taken by newcomers, who either emerged from the forest in front of us, or from Dunster behind us.  They were promptly briefed on the state of affairs by our long-term fans, the original family, who by now had turned their walk into an impromptu packhorse bridge picnic. Munching on sandwiches and biscuits, they gestured knowingly at Andrew and I, smiling and laughing, and the newcomers, smitten with this new-found camaraderie, smiled and laughed also, and accepted a biscuit or two. 

Still no sign of John and help. We should have been at the point of our little outing when it was time to turn around and go home. I was supposed to be at work within the hour. Instead we were stuck in a fast flowing river, a very cold fast flowing river.

The exhaust made a different gurgle, the engine missed a couple of times, ran smoothly, but briefly, and then died.  Andrew and I looked at one another. 

The crowd was beside itself with joy.  ‘Abandon Ship’, ‘Get out before you are washed into the Bristol Channel’ and other cheerful and merry exhortations. The teenager was laughing so much he began to choke on his sandwich, and his mother started to bang on his back.

Water was obviously rushing down the now silent exhaust pipe … frantic, and sick with that worry that only reckless four-wheelers experience, having vainly attempted a maneuver that turned out to not only be impossible, but simultaneously impossibly expensive, I reached for the ignition key and turned it. The motor turned, slowly, and then faster and then miracle of miracles, marvel of marvels, the engine fired, stumbled a turn or two, and then roared back to life. 

The crowd’s reaction was mixed … Some cheered, but others, those with characters that leant more towards a negative view of the world, booed.

And then some in the crowd pointed behind us, and joy of joys, there was a tractor, driven by a ruddy-faced man in a tattered tweed jacket and a tweed cap, with John standing on the draw bar behind him. 

Salvation! 

John walked across the ford towards us, carrying the chain, and attached to the Champ’s pintle hook which was still above water, and then returned to the tractor, which in the meantime had turned around, and fastened the other end of the chain to the drawbar.  Giving us the thumbs up, the farmer slowly took up the slack in the chain and pulled. We started to move, slowly but easily, and a moment or two later we were out of the water. 

The crowd dispersed, sated. All in all, it had been a jolly good Sunday morning so far.

Turning down our offer of a couple of pounds for his trouble, the farmer laughed and said it was all in a day's work, it had only taken a few minutes, and not to worry about it. He hadn’t got wet, that was the main thing, he chuckled. Of course, that is the thing about farmers and farming. I learnt this truth a few years later, when I was farming on the Brendon Hills. Every day presents an unforeseen problem, a dilemma, an undreamt of difficulty. Indeed farming itself is really a massive collection of messes, imbroglios and quandaries, endless strings of them that have to be met head on, one after the other. Each has to be analyzed and resolved, and then it’s on to the next one. I guess if one is able to stay dry, that is at least one predicament avoided.

I drove the Champ back to our flat. It misfired, ran on two, three then four, then back to two again, and so on. We got home, changed into dry clothes, and I headed off to work at Butlin’s, the Champ stuttering and misfiring all the way.

Got there half an hour late for work. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ I mumbled to the boss, ‘Bit of mechanical trouble.’

The Champ never ran well after this. It might run well for three or four hundred miles, and then would start misfiring again. I put it down to the fact that as well engineered and waterproofed as it was, once water did get in it was very hard, if not impossible, to get it out again. I removed the distributor cap and ignition wires and put them in the oven to dry out but to no avail.

By mid-summer I had had enough of Butlin’s and the stress and madness of the job. I was 21 and was Chief Cashier, responsible for all the money that came into the camp. In peak weeks the camp held about ten thousand holidaymakers (known as campers) and about three thousand workers. All the money that was taken in on the camp ended up being counted, balanced and banked from my department. We ran two shifts a day, and no one could leave the office at the end of the night shift until everything was balanced. It was a ridiculous job for a 21 year old.

So I gave in my notice, and headed out in the Champ for a few days to clear my head, and ended up in London at Island Records, and got my old job back, found a flat in Hemel Hempstead, and brought Wendy and my two children, Mandy and Andrew up to Hemel to start our new life.

The Island job came with a company car, and I sold the Champ. It had been fun, but it was too complicated for my very limited mechanical knowledge.

And it was running like shit anyway.

How to take a Champ into deep water without getting stuck