Land Rover Discovery - long-term review

Snow at home. It’s the season for it, after all. So we planned an afternoon walk with friends up on the hills. Seven of us piled into the Disco – well, once we’d faffed with the electric folding seats and crammed wellies into the tiny boot slot – and off we went.

Keen to demonstrate winter tyres and proper clanky 4x4 bits we travelled by the littler lanes, aiming for a particular spot where I suspected the snow would have drifted across. It had. Excellent. But we weren’t the first there. Ahead, a van, stuck fast and a bloke on a quad bike trying to tug it loose. No chance.

Out we climb, deploy the towbar (electrically of course), attach the towrope, select low range and maximum in-cabin smugness, and give it a heave. I’ll skate over the fact we snapped the slender climbing rope twice before the van driver remembered he had a proper strap on board, and move straight to success. With traction off and diffs locked there was a bit of wheel scrabble on the mud and snow initially, but then the Disco just knuckled down to it, pulling the van (and most of the snowdrift) back down the hill and, well, entirely saving the day.

“When you came up the hill, I thought you’d just reverse back,” said van man, “Not for a second did I think you’d stop and help. Thank you – it’s so good to see it being used as intended.” I struck a heroic ‘all in a day’s work’ pose, and carried on where we’d left off, only now humming a little ditty: da-da-da-da-Discoman!