With a shoot coming up a few weeks time, which will mean not only travelling with Dianne & Claudio, but also with all my gear as well as theirs – then it was time to think about how I could put more stuff up on top of the wagon – without spending more than I needed to or putting a roof-rack up there that couldn’t be easily removed by me (on my only) once I was back at the base.
I already have 4 roof bars for the Land Rover – which I bought a few years ago to carry 8×4 sheets of plywood and insulation boards – so at first I considered just using a sheet of marine plywood – which when everything would have been put on top of it and strapped down, would have worked fine.
However, I thought, what about when all the gear is of it – how will I then make sure that it doesn’t fly off?
Anyway, after having looking once again at all the various roof racks available for this type of Land Rover by various companies throughout the UK – including the beautiful Highlander roof rack by Safety Devices (which neatly follows the profile of the vehicle’s roof), which I absolutely love the look of – I finally decided to call in to see the guys at Coates Engineering, one day after going for my daily swim at the Bangor Aurora Aquatic and Leisure Complex – which is were I tend to do a lot of my ‘forward thinking’ these days, as I remember those wonderful days in the past, when I was actually able to swim more than 100 metres without having to stop to catch my breath 
Anyway, this was the result…
.. which is a 6′ x 4′ sheet of galvanized steel mesh – which they designed some bolts for, as seen here…
.. to hold it to the roof bars…
.. from underneath…
.. which is then held in place from above by this little plate…
.. and squared of at the back to prevent me from catching it as I push the cases up there…
.. as some of them are quite heavy.
Perfect…
.. and I think it looks pretty good to, after I painted it black, since image is everything after all
So there you have it – a very simple and cost-effective solution in the end – which simply means we are now already to go, on our next exciting adventure 
Ashley Morrison's Blog 