August 14, 2003

I'M back! Didja miss me? Oh well. Many thanks again to Mr Cooper for filling in for me last week. Even though this time it's costing me my parents' souls and a crate of Babycham, it was well worth it. So, with the weather last week resembling the Sahara more than Senghenydd, it's the right time to take a look at one sport I've actually tried. No, not the sofa-fridge-sofa relay, but dune-buggying.

There's only one place to go for dune-buggying in America, and that's Glamis in Southern California (see glamisdunes.com). In fact, any further south and we'd all have been wearing sombreros and swigging Tequila, but that's another story.

To successfully dune buggy, you need the following:

1. A dune buggy (obvious, but essential). For anyone unfamiliar with this sport, a dune buggy is basically an aluminium cage holding an aluminium box attached to four wheels and a very big engine. They travel at three basic speeds: fast, bloody fast and Warp 9.

2: Someone who's prepared to drive it at 90mph over very large sand dunes (my driver was Ken).

3: A very, very nervous Welsh tourist (optional, but good for a laugh).

4: Protective gear that makes you look like a sock puppet.

Once you've got these elements, you're set. Not even negotiating the roadworks on the A470 comes close to driving across sand dunes in 100 degrees of desert heat strapped into a tin can on wheels. It's amazing.

Fortunately, I had a superb driver who took the time to explain the safety rules to me (basically, don't be a moron - thank God he didn't realise the irony), made sure I was strapped in, then proceeded to scare the you-know-what out of me for a few hours.

The roar of the engine and the sand in the eyes just added to an exhilarating experience, even though there were a few jokes about skid marks, and the scenery - a blank, featureless desert stretching for miles (I'm sure there's a joke about Ebbw Vale to be made there) - was stunning. Check out glamisdunes.com - especially the photo galleries - to get an idea of what it's like. But it'll only be an idea.