Somewhere in all this, you’d be trying to keep the controller alive, wrapped in a crinkled plastic bag like it was the last sandwich at a school trip. Buttons barely responsive, visibility gone, hands freezing, and you still had to log clean, accurate data like everything was absolutely fine.
And the mad thing is… it was.
Because underneath all of that – the discomfort, the weather, the absolute battering from the elements – there was something properly good about it. You were out there. Properly out there. No shortcuts, no shortcuts in thinking either. Just you, the kit and the job.
You earned every point.
These days, you see lads flying up and down beaches on quad bikes, wrapped up like they’re heading for the Arctic, barely breaking stride while the kit does half the thinking for them. Efficient? Absolutely. Sensible? Probably. But there’s a part of me that would still rather do it the old way – walking it, feeling every step of it – than sat frozen to a quad bike getting bounced along like cargo.
And here’s the thing… 30 years on, our lads are still out there doing it. Same coastline, same wind, same sand finding its way into places it shouldn’t. The kit’s better, the outputs sharper, the process quicker – but the environment hasn’t softened one bit. If anything, it feels like it’s got worse.
So, who had the better deal?
The ones now, covering miles without breaking sweat, getting the data quicker and getting home sooner… or us, trudging every metre, fighting the elements, knowing we’d earned every single point the hard way?
Truth is, I’m not sure there’s a right answer.
But I know which one I’d choose.