Camp: fail!

So, last weekend I trolled down to a reasonably local tent exhibition, to ogle the goods and cackle about the relative merits of bijou canvas latties with the exhibitionists. I'm not really a tentist, you see, it's more camping between jobs...

It's important to check these things out, eek-to-eek as it were, after all, I don't want to splash out hard-earned handbag on something cod!

Anyway, after a little mince round the field, feasting my greedy orbs on several quite impressive erections, I asked the omi in charge if I might be bold enough to try one or two out, explaining that I am quite nante experience in camping. He was dolly enough to send his cove round with me in case I got myself into trouble.

Now, I'm not expecting anything big enough to play the strillers in, nothing too zhooshy, and I intend to be dossing on me todd sloane, but I was quite taken aback at how compact some of them are. After I climbed into the first one me lallies were sticking out, and there was absolutely no room for me shush bag.

The next one was quite roomy, but pink. I'd have felt like I was sleeping in drag, and the morning light would have been filtered through rose tinted oglefakes.

Finally, I found the very thing I was charpering for, absolutely bona for the tober. I was all set to deal out the measures to blag it, when the naff chicken saw fit to inform me "Nish, mate, nante in stock!"

Well, I was so upset I had to head straight to the bungery for a quiet vogue and a stiff vera!

Exhibitionists? You can keep 'em! Next time I'll give me plates a rest and order a tent on the palare pipe.

What's this then?

Welcome to the Grumbly B'stard tour pages.

Later this year two dashing, handsome and intrepid adventurers - specifically "The Grumbler" (me) and his neighbour, "Bob the Bastard" (I coined this nickname because he has more toys than I do - a fact that will become apparent in these meanderings) intend to tour this Septic Island by motorcycle, taking in its northern and southern extremities in the process.

We'll use this blog to document the planning and the trip itself, so that people with nothing better to do can see for themselves how much of a mess two allegedly intelligent geezers can make of a simple road trip.

Apart from that, of course, it'll be a place where we can

• talk about our bikes (BtB isn't sure which of his he'll use yet - see what I mean about the nickname?)
• rabbit on about places we hope to visit
• brag about the ridiculous quantity of kit that this trip has given us the excuse to squander hard earned shekels on
  
• post pictures of the trip, both being keen photographers
• and do anything else we want.

Its been pointed out to me (thanks Martin and Neil) that some 'blogs' have gone on to make their writers (or in our case I'm tempted to say perpetrators) money. However, we arent Ewan and Charlie or Belle de Jour - although we have a lot in common with these characters (one of us has a BMW GS Adventure, and the other claims - while refusing to provide documented proof - to have had sex in a hotel once).

But hopefully there'll be some interesting bits in the blog eventually!

Meantime, perhaps you'd like to see the first attempt at our route? This is the result of a couple of hours of playing with Microsoft Autoroute. It should only have been one hour, but since its a product of the evil empire, our first route was lost to the ether when the machine crashed...