nearly all in the details

links below for camping arrangements - cost vary but are between £5 and £10

get them rung up and booked then they know where they are at [you never know they might even put extra bar staff on if they have a full campsite - we can live in hope]

the site on the 10th seems to have changed their number or something so i cant get in touch with them but will update as soon as possible

pre-night shindig 8th - the Three Magpies

9th sept - the White Horse

10th sept -

11th sept - the Bull i th Thorn

pre-run pre-ran

so i got back yesterday, the pre-run is now all pre-ran. to be perfectly honest it was all a bit farcical.

i set off on friday night and i got about 8 miles and the sat-nav took a dump. now i dont generally like relying on these things but when you have 500 miles of unknown roads to navigate they save a TON of time. i had paper maps in the bags too but not ideal at all.... i rode something that loosely resembles the days 2 and 3 route based on memory, instinct and stopping every now and then to look at the iphone to see exactly where i was... made for a fun trip.

to top it all off when i got home last night i plugged in the "waterproof" camera and it had got wet and wont turn on - inbuilt flash drive so no picys for you to see either.

digging through my bag on the last night i pulled out my go-pro camera that has been lost since the last trip [yup - i put it somewhere "safe" in a side pocket...] so i took a couple of little vids i will see if they are any good later on tonight.

when i got home i noticed the sporty sounded louder than normal - to top it off i now have a blowing exhaust

ill get map updated and campsites listed later in the week - see you all there

stickerific

just got the stickers in today, arent they beautiful...

its hard to show just how offensive they are in a pic, but its that stuff that you get on little kid barbie stickers

Day 1

Remapped and reworked route for day 1 HERE

Riding the crap so you don't have to

a big thanks to adam and shaun for coming along on the first stretch of the pre-running. as ever for pre-running, modern bikes were order of the day. fazer, thundercat and pan-euro

we got the first day mapped out and messed with - i will sort a map later on when i get a chance but in the mean time....

got to the THREE MAGPIES on saturday night

its a proper old little country boozer with a lovely atmosphere and they keep a really nice selection of beers/ ciders to match your choice tipple. a few beers were partaken in and then camping inthe site round the back. it is primarily a caravan site but they take tents at £8 per tent. they also do food in the pub. there are small but sound shower toilet facilities on the site

got on the road for 8am on sunday and killed some miles. about 40 minutes in we found a lovely cafe that we'll be using on the run. full english fry set us up for the day. then back on the road.

then everything stops for tea. a nice pot of tea and cakes all round - oh we are badass bikers indeed

the first 130 or so miles were great. after that things started going a bit astray with the route hitting too many little villages etc so after battling with it for a couple of hours we abandoned the route and backtracked and sorted a much more pleasing section out. but thats why we pre-run this stuff - so you dont have to [we really are too good to you sometimes]

day 1 is a pretty long days ride - we were on modern bikes with only 1 fuel stop, 1 food stop, and 1 cake stop and were still on the move for 7 hours. with the new route this will drop a little but still - its a good leg stretch.

fun time had and now onto the rest of the pre-run.

MAP UPDATE

things are settling down again here at tipple run central, and pre-run is due on again [yea - 60 days to go is cutting it finer than i like for sorting the route out]

been doing some map doodlings and heres the plan until we find its junk/crap roads/too far/not far enough

heres the idea of order of proceedings

8th september

night camping in devises - nice pub site we stumbled across on last years pre-run

day 1

rolling out 9.30am sharp for anyone not making the pre-night drinky meet n greet. miss that time and twist your throttle to catch us up - we wont be waiting

devizes - sudbury: aprox 180 miles [roughly 6 or 7 hours all told]

day 2

sudbury - skegness: aprox 210 miles [roughly 7 hours]

day 3

skegness - buxton: aprox 200 miles [roughly 6 hours]

so its looking like a 600 mile run plus get yourself to devises and home from buxton. so yes - its a good leg stretch but its doable - previous years have been between 4 and 600 miles and havent been crippling.