MISSION IMPASSABLE

THERE'S not a lot to it really. Keep your thumbs off the steering wheel, your foot off the clutch. Oh, yes, and pull the red one forward. I get the mantra going yellow lever for the high gears, red for the low ones. Simple while Sandy Brown, the instructor, is doing, it.

"Now it's your turn," he says.

My turn? To drive the four wheel a drive Land Rover up that flowing river of mud, with a drop to oblivion on one side, brush and tangled undergrowth on the other and a fallen tree trunk lying at an evil angle at the top, just where we have to make a sharp turn left?

"Isn't there something easier I could, try first?"

"This is easy," says Sandy and hands me a stick of chewing gum to calm me down.

"Do you not take the wrapper off first?" he asks as I grimly chew my way through it, paper and all. What me nervous?

"So why are your hands shaking?"

"Hangover," I say, though I've been" alcohol free for many long weeks now.

With a shudder and a lurch we're off, trees hurtling towards us then receding again, mud churning outwards in all directions, engine roaring, wheels spinning, undergrowth cracking a white knuckle carnival ride to hell.

"Give her a bit more throttle More!" shouts Sandy, above the noise. "Give her more." I put my foot down and the back swings round, shuddering upwards and sideways, crazy as a drunken crab. Finally, we scream to a halt, broadside on, just short of the brow of the hill and as the four wheels settle cosily into the mud I know why I've lost it not enough throttle.

We slither backwards down the hill and try again. I get over the top on the third attempt and head for a sort of Valley of Despond which we have to, climb down into and then immediately get out of again. The front wheels hang over the edge of the drop for a brief moment before we plunge blindly into the abyss.

This time I've got the hang of it. Despite the urge to brake, I keep my foot off the pedal and then, just as the front wheels bite the base of the incline opposite, I let in the throttle and the vehicle climbs sweetly up the other side straight into a high sided ruts that sends us racketing from left to right, the steering wheel yawing violently to a rhythm of its own making. That's why you keep your thumbs off it. Hang on and they break off.

When I first started seeking to renew my acquaintance with four wheel drive vehicles, I rang a friend down the country. She laughed uproariously. "I don't know anyone who has one. Only people, in Dublin drive that sort off. Together with green wellies, the 4WD, as we aficionados call them, is a style accessory for the urban fashion fetishist and I had to go to Monaghan no great penance to find Europe's largest off road driving school.

Leonard Regan runs Catalyst Event Management's Tuff Terrain programme, taking individuals and groups in his fleet of 15 canvas topped Land Rovers deep into the grounds of Castle Leslie where, across 1,000 acres of woodland and rough ground, he has mapped out a series of graded tracks. While navigating these, the novice 4WD driver will encounter ditches, rivers, switch backs mud ponds, gravel pits, sheer inclines, tree", trunks and other apparently impassable obstacles.

The skill comes in learning how to assess what is passable and what is not. If in doubt about that water filled ditch, get out and poke it with a stick. Should you get totally stuck, you jack yourself out with the help of an inflatable jack pumped up by the exhaust. Or resort to an electric winch. And one of the basic safety rules you, never, ever, go out on your own.

"Incidentally," Sandy says, "women do far better than men. They're not so heavy on the throttle. That's because," he continues, wiping the smirk off my face, "they're more likely to do as you tell them."

Non drivers too are regarded as apt pupils because they don't arrive with any preconceived ideas or bad habits.

You get all sorts on the courses. The truly serious ones are the mountain rescue people who want to learn as much as they can. For them, this is no game but a matter of life and death.

The less serious ones are the people who come along often as part of a corporate training group. Once registered, they will be split up into teams, with an instructor in every vehicle, armed with a phone keeping in touch is an important safety element. Each team is given a route to negotiate and instructed to help their partner vehicles get back to base if they run into trouble. There's nothing, it seems, like a bit of comradeship spiced with competition for enhancing that sense of togetherness so dearly sought after by corporations these days the sales team that plays together, stays together. And play they do, the high fliers covering themselves in glory but also in enough mud to ensure the bond not only to each other but to any surface they may come in contact with.

For me, off road driving is a bit like having a go at rock climbing once bitten, you'll be back for more. And is it dangerous? Not really. Certainly not as risky as cycling through Dublin in the rush hour.