It's a sunny weekend and I’m awake early, coffee in hand and up for an adventure. But while my normal go-to might be to jump in the sports car and blitz down some B-roads, I’ve got another idea in mind: let’s off-road.
I'm behind the wheel of a Dacia Duster. It has a five-speed manual gearbox, a 128bhp mild-hybrid powertrain and, most importantly for my Sunday jaunt, four-wheel drive.
Autocar photographer and former fellow south coast-dweller Jack Harrison pointed me in the direction of Corfe Castle in Dorset, which is where we now find ourselves.
Just half an hour from Poole, the landscape here is awash with green rolling hills as far as the eye can see. Heading down a narrow B-road, I turn onto a short gravel track, at the end of which I’m met with a large metal gate adorned with a sign that says I must shut it or the cows will escape.
It feels odd to be here with a car, but despite the odd walker staring quizzically at me, this is a perfectly legal byway I can carefully drive along.
There’s even a sign clearly saying: ‘Green Lane Association, byway open to all traffic.’ So I open the gate, drive through and close it behind me. We’re in.
Ahead lies our first test: a slight hill strewn with small craters and a herd of cows. I twist the mode selector to Lock (to lock the central differential into 4x4 mode) and off we go. And you know what? This is a lot easier than I was expecting.
Okay, it’s hardly the Moab desert, but the amount of grip I’m finding with the Duster is impressive. Its light steering, which I’m already a fan of on the road, allows for much-needed quick corrections – especially when I go into a pothole that I didn’t know was there and which throws me in the direction of what looks like the chief cow.
At least the brakes are also working well. It then dawns on me that the Duster has parking cameras that work up to 12mph, and I could have used those for pothole spotting.
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