The picture shown was taken in February 2006 and depicts Simon Buck and Matt Cook with their 'balls of steel' trophies for winning, after an incredibly hard fought, two day battle, at the inaugural Ironman Enduro event. On the left is James Feeny and Pat Smart just pipped into second place. The Ironman Enduro was held about 20 miles North West of Inverness and entailed two days of rock and bog hopping in wind, rain snow and fog - and that was just the good weather.

Simon and Matt were a perfect foil to each other, and the standard of preparation of whatever vehicle they entered (either a Ninety or a bob tailed Range Rover with an exhaust note to make strong men tremble) was, and from what I see on the internet, still is, just sublime.  

Their understanding of each others, and the cars, abilities was almost spooky and, in the era before personal intercoms became the norm, it could save vital time on tasks. The Highland Enduro was one of the very few of my own events that was designed for solo cars, rather than teams of two cars. The latter was, I believe, hard for Simon who preferred to run solo BUT they never whinged about it and had several excellent partners over the years. Like most (but not all) of the top flight challenge entrants on our events they were extremely competitive but only on the field of battle. They were always happy to help out and Simon was never coy about what he had done to his cars, happily telling others of the modifications. My only real regret with these two sterling blokes was that never swapped seats for an event so I could write... "Cook/Buck" in my report!