Take the world's most urban SUV to Europe's largest wilderness to go wolf-hunting?
When BMW called the X6 a ‘Sports Activity Vehicle', it never said what sports, or specified what activities... though one suspects that BMW probably regards the designation as involving over-aerobicised lifestyle droids rollerblading followed by a stint of vigorous casual posing. Something picturesque and over-clean that means you can't see the bovine glaze in the model's eyes, or the ribbons of silvery drool from the corners of their vacant mouths. Photographer Justin Leighton and I, on the other hand, regarded it as an open door for imaginative interpretation. Which is why we are now stood - woefully underprepared - in a 60,000-hectare Polish wilderness trying to lure wolves from their hidey holes with half-eaten ham sandwiches. In the middle of the night.
A sport? No. But you'll be hard pressed not to class it as an activity
Of course, this probably means that right now there's an engineer in Germany either cracking a sly grin, or pushing two sharpened HB pencils up his nose prior to banging his head on his desk. An X6 wasn't supposed to have a roofrack loaded with spare wheels, jerry cans and tools. It wasn't supposed to have off-road tyres, ropes slung casually across it, or dinner-plate Hellas. It wasn't supposed to off-road, in a place where recovery is virtually impossible, in the company of people whose professional preparation amounts to bringing a coat. But sod comfort zones. Safe, yes. Unlikely to get you into a situation in which you get eaten, yes. But dull. So we've taken the terribly urban SAV that is the X6 right out into Europe's largest wilderness. Where the wolves and the wild things are.
First the prep. The X6 hasn't got much off-the-shelf, bolt-on machismo, so we visited expedition professionals Nene Overland, who made stuff fit. Hella supplied some lights (think tiny suns trapped in glass) and after a salad garnish of ropes and spare wheels (two fronts and one rear), the X6 suddenly looked more real. And brilliant. There's a moment's ponder as we gaze upon the huge tyre on the roof and decide that it looks like a rubber turret, but that's soon swept away in a hormonal rush of childish glee when we flick on the spotlights and realise that they're so powerful they burn down a small tree in my front garden.
The rest is simple. Channel Tunnel, France, brief flirtation with the Netherlands, speedy run through Germany, overnight in Berlin. Sudden cold-sweat when remembering the danger to others should our roofrack part company at 130mph, but the mobile camping shop above our heads stays limpet-like. Though one has to say, it's pretty destructive to the fuel economy: we read just 18mpg on the blasty bit. Next day and it's an early start, and an introduction to Poland. We hit the border after the glorious unfettered speed of the Autobahn and then nearly hit a lorry as Poland swaps motorway for decrepit A-road.
Injection of Soviet-era grey, heavy on the truck theme. Which is Poland's welcome; a country's main artery shrunken to the bare minimum and populated almost entirely by 18-wheelers, the roadside regularly dotted with 24-hour ‘Niteclub-hotels', or brothels, if you're being more prosaic. The X6 is in its element. The road is mined with ridiculous potholes and the kind of semi-suicidal overtake that seems to be a favourite with local traffic is not a comforting endeavour. Basically you get halfway around a truck and then find yourself with no option but to crash madly into a massive crater or be buttered across the front of an oncoming ERF. It means that anything without the X6's ride height and depth of rubber would be literally crippled within minutes.
Fourteen hours of wincing overtakes later, and we're in a place called Biebrza, up near the Russian border in north-east Poland. A long way from urban. The place we've come to is Europe's largest wilderness, the diametric opposite of any place you'd usually find an X6 and the home to three European wolf packs, which are currently following elk down into the wintery depths of the forest, presumably to get out of the wind and set up some sort of lupine ambush. Now, Biebrza National Park is a big place. Mainly wetlands, it is nevertheless dominated by several tens of thousands of hectares of birch and pine forest, juniper bushes and water. And woodland fur, still on the animals. We've come to hunt wolves, but it becomes clear when we pick up our guide Kasha, that even though we're only shooting with cameras, charging about in a white truck with a branch of Millet's welded to the roof means that shy and ghosty wolves are not likely to be on the agenda.
Undeterred, we head off into the forest, initially following old forestry tracks into the gloaming half-light. Turns out we're in Narnia. The forest pitches off as far as the eye can see, a strange mixture of calm and implicit ancient threat. The trees have few leaves, the ground is generally boggy and wet or sandy and mossy, and carved up with unseen dips and crevices. And it's very, very hard to orientate, to get a sense of direction with so many bloody trees. But it is absolutely brain-strainingly magical. Those stories you hear as a child, about enchanted forests, fairies, will'o'the'wisps and things that live in the dark places, it's all here in the forest of Biebrza. You can believe that magic survives here, rooted in the trees. And if you've got the imagination for it, you can make it do that weird foresty thing of either being beautifically zen, or totally creepy
It all seems pretty quiet too, until you look through the eyes of Kasha and see the wildlife that teems through this place. Unfocus your brain and swing your head from side to side and, like some weird 3D poster, you will see elk stalking through the forest. Big, blocky moose-alikes, these super-deer have white legs to better mirror the birch tree trunks. Once you perfect the art of tuning out the trees, you suddenly see the animals languidly cropping at anything within range. The wolves eat them. But for all the elk, still there are no wolves.
After a while, we pop out of the forest, spear off on one of the causeways that criss-cross the area and the trees stop. In front of us is the world's biggest fen, coarse sedge seething over the horizon, making the sky look suddenly very big and very wide. The X6 thrumbles around like it's been dropped from a spaceship, splashing through puddles and mud, flickering torque around those grip-vectoring differentials like a dealer at a blackjack table casually flipping out cards. It makes this look ridiculously easy. Urban SAV? Nah, the X6 can handle the rough stuff. It just needs the right shoes and a smidge of confidence. Of course, as soon as I've made this assertion, we suddenly encounter an off-roading issue.
The local beavers undermine the causeways so they collapse and leave several inches of wading water. Not a problem until you realise that the ‘fen' off the causeway is actually three-metres deep, so there's no chance of driving around the obstacle. Enough to swallow the X6 before you can get a towrope out. If there was anything to attach a towrope to. Which there isn't.
I ask Kasha if there's a chance of actually glimpsing any beaver, at which point Justin nearly coughs up a lung. But signs of the toothy critters are everywhere, not least in the fact that the causeways are now a foot deep in water. Of course, with no real idea of how deep we can wade, we go for brute force and ignorance. Bizarrely, the X6 is so duck's bum watertight that it floats across deep bits. Hit the shallower parts at speed and the car will also use its very flat undertray to skip across water. Possibly not what BMW engineers had in mind, but effective and undeniably spectacular. And it might have sent 30-foot jets of spray into the air, but a quick look inside the engine bay revealed not a drop under the bonnet. Seals that good usually come on the Space Shuttle.
After spectacularly failing to spot any decent beaver (fnar), we head out of the wetlands and back into the monstrous forest. At some unspecified point we pause to take a breath and noticed how utterly silent the forest is. But it's not the silence of absence, more the silence of lots of things being very, very quiet. Which is actually more disturbing.
And then I see it. A wolf.
A low, four-legged shape, moving quickly through the trees, towards us. In my peripheral vision, another. Rangy, slinking through the muted shades of the forest. I count seven, eight wolves, all moving rapidly in our direction, including a stumpy ginger one with floppy ears. Which, not meaning to be gingerist, doesn't fit the usual wolf template. As the wolves come closer, it becomes clear that these are not lupine, but canine. A pack of dogs including, among the scary half-fed mongrels, a small, spastically excited ginger spaniel.
Through half-light and pure, expanded, high-resolution wetlands light, through time and effort. The X6 doesn't miss a beat, never fails, nor stops. Our little mobile bit of the 21st century doesn't fail us, and takes any preconception you may have of an ‘urban SAV' and stuffs it - this BMW can be as hardcore as it looks.
Deep into the night we stray mildy around trying to lure wildlife from the darkness with Bourbon biscuits and later, exposed parts of photographer. But we never do see a wolf. So we turn around, point west and head for home, and just as we do, we see a pair of eyes reflected in the darkness. We leave an offering, and disappear quietly. If Biebrza has taught us anything, it's that sometimes magic is about what you don't see, rather than what you do.
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