Wednesday, April 28, 2010
May Ramble
The May ramble to be announced soon, or whenever Sandyballs gets around to it as he will not be there but having his appendage "fixed". Lafayette or Froggy will no doubt be sending out the appropriate notification.
Monday, April 26, 2010
N.E.R.D.S’ RAMBLE No. 245. 21/4/10.
Those Present - B.T. Sandyballs, Froggy, El Paco, Lafayette.
The Superbly Organised Ramble.
Today nothing could go wrong. Froggy was Organiser and Routemaster so absolutely nothing whatsoever would be allowed to get in the way of an absolutely fantastic ramble. The NERDS all knew this since the joining instructions had been published about a fortnight in advance telling us exactly where we would be going, how long it would take to get there, what to wear, what time to get the bus, how much money to bring, make sure you go to the lavatory first, have you got a clean hanky? and don’t forget to kiss your mum goodbye!
The only two flies in the ointment were (a) Would Sandyballs be able to get off nights early and avoid the dreaded embarks exercise and (b) would B.T. turn up at all due to hostile volcanic activity which might make his plane nose-dive into the Channel.
In the event, Froggy had a word with President Obama who contacted the Night CIO (Maybe the one with the nice, mumsy buttocks) and got Sandyballs off OK, and then he also contacted the president of Iceland who stopped the volcano for a brief window of 24 hours to enable BT to get to chez Lafayette where he was staying. Who says that organisation is not best done down to the finest details? Froggy should be the NATO general in charge of the Afghan war - then we’d see some results!
Actually BT had been staying at Lafayette’s for a few days already so the pair of them had been a bit overexposed to calvados and were feeling a little tired and jaded.
Never mind, the grand adventure was on. Lafayette rescued Sandyballs from the port where ‘Mumsy Bum CIO’ wanted to keep him as a sexual pet, and then the three of them set out to get the bus to chez Froggy for aperitifs.
Except the best laid plans of frogs and men…………
Lafayette dragged his fellow NERDS on to what he thought was the right bus, but it turned out to be the ‘go all round the houses bus’ which gave everyone a brilliant tour of most of the back streets of Seaford, and ended up by the cemetery. So, quelling a desire to go and pay homage to A Famous Belgian once again, the trio hiked along the road , at least half a mile to Froggy’s . It was all his fault, of course, he hadn’t told us not to get the 12A bus instead of the No 12 - what an oversight!
Poor Froggy; not only was he exhausted from the intellectual challenges of making sure everything was going to run to plan, but he had been up half the night cleaning and hoovering so that we should have nothing to complain about when we got there.
Anyway, the food was good ( Banofee pie cookies ) and the drink gave us a choice of two whiskies (Scotch and Irish) and El Paco had turned up despite Lafayette having forgotten to ring him the night before on account of his being rat-arsed at the time.
So everyone indulged themselves greatly and then we were led out on to phase one of today’s ramble.
Everyone stood at the bus stop waving their bus passes in the faces of Froggy and BT
(who hadn’t got them) and then managed to get on the right bus to somewhere near Beachy Head to start off. The road was long and stoney, but straight enough so that there was at this stage no chance of getting lost. However we soon came to a dividing of the ways. Which road to take? Froggy wasn’t sure so out came the Mappa Mundi for reference. El Paco seemed to know the right direction but he was ignored. Froggy twisted the map around, tried to read it upside down, tried murmuring incantations, all to no avail. Paco insisted he knew where to go but Froggy wasn’t having any. Finally two hippy ramblers turned up and pointed us in Paco’s direction. So much for tight organisation! Paco now has a Cassandra complex.
It was a glorious, sunny day and the NERDS were singing along happily. All the little lambs we saw had numbers on them - one for each NERD, there were lots of Old Trout ramblers about, but thankfully they were miles from the pub we intended to invade. Froggy had a bad feeling about this pub, he said the people who ran it were snooty and offhand (so why take us there?) but as it happened the barmaid at The Eight Bells at Jevington was really nice and took to Harry ‘cos her boyfriend had the same name or something (blech! blech!).
We sat in the garden in the sun and Froggy was made to serve us with lots of sauces and condiments and stuff while we gave him marks out of ten for fetching and carrying . He got so flustered at one point that he told us he’d got a barrow in his family (Is this a sort of welsh family burial plot?). But when the food came (we all had meaty pie) the pies all had tons of meat in them and there were loads of chips so the food was definitely ’NERDS approved.‘ Froggy said he was never given any vegetables as a kid and that’s why he himself nearly grew up as a meaty pie -
different taste, though.
We staggered on for the second half of the ramble (exactly three miles, not a metre more, not a metre less) and got taken along a nasty, horrible, busy road with lots of wizzy cars going passed us. Eventually we hit woody fieldy areas again , trouble was they were mostly in the direction of up and Lafayette’s bowels began to play up too. Whether it was the excess of calvados taken the night before or his wife’s chile con carne he had had at breakfast (magic stuff!) he could contain himself no longer and had to wander off for an emergency crap. Good job there was a nice copse further up the hill where he could squat and wallow! Pity there weren’t any goats or Pakistanis to make sure he had a nice clean bum afterwards - like in the old days, but Hey! You can’t expect everything laid on for you.
When he returned to the fold Lafayette found the rest of the NERDS all flaked out lying in the middle of a very pleasant meadow, evidently the heavy lunch and the unaccustomed rigorous and disciplined activity had taken its toll. Lafayette let them slumber awhile and then woke them gently with a thunderous fart.
We carried on ever upwards it seemed but eventually descended another pleasant meadow into East Dean where The Tiger (pub) was waiting for us. Here they sold ‘Legless Rambler’ beer (and I’m not kidding!) which came from the Beachy Head Brewery. ‘I wonder where the Beachy Head Brewery is’ quoth Paco…‘D’oh!’ We all replied. We then spent a very pleasant hour in the late afternoon sun quaffing Legless Ramblers and trying to decide where we should go for the NERDS’ 250th. We decided to disqualify Philby from this since he’d missed a few rambles already this year and we didn’t fancy going to Belgium so soon again, anyway.
And so we all walked back to the bus stop and left Froggy standing when the wrong bus came again. Actually it was the right bus for all of us - it just didn’t happen to take Froggy back exactly to his front door (as planned).
And so another superlative ramble combining fantastic weather, good food and absolutely impeccable planning from Froggy. We all hope that BT gets home OK because Lafayette has nearly run out of red wine and calvados.
Looking forward to the 250th , you NERDS. (wherever the fuck it is!)
Lafayette.
Those Present - B.T. Sandyballs, Froggy, El Paco, Lafayette.
The Superbly Organised Ramble.
Today nothing could go wrong. Froggy was Organiser and Routemaster so absolutely nothing whatsoever would be allowed to get in the way of an absolutely fantastic ramble. The NERDS all knew this since the joining instructions had been published about a fortnight in advance telling us exactly where we would be going, how long it would take to get there, what to wear, what time to get the bus, how much money to bring, make sure you go to the lavatory first, have you got a clean hanky? and don’t forget to kiss your mum goodbye!
The only two flies in the ointment were (a) Would Sandyballs be able to get off nights early and avoid the dreaded embarks exercise and (b) would B.T. turn up at all due to hostile volcanic activity which might make his plane nose-dive into the Channel.
In the event, Froggy had a word with President Obama who contacted the Night CIO (Maybe the one with the nice, mumsy buttocks) and got Sandyballs off OK, and then he also contacted the president of Iceland who stopped the volcano for a brief window of 24 hours to enable BT to get to chez Lafayette where he was staying. Who says that organisation is not best done down to the finest details? Froggy should be the NATO general in charge of the Afghan war - then we’d see some results!
Actually BT had been staying at Lafayette’s for a few days already so the pair of them had been a bit overexposed to calvados and were feeling a little tired and jaded.
Never mind, the grand adventure was on. Lafayette rescued Sandyballs from the port where ‘Mumsy Bum CIO’ wanted to keep him as a sexual pet, and then the three of them set out to get the bus to chez Froggy for aperitifs.
Except the best laid plans of frogs and men…………
Lafayette dragged his fellow NERDS on to what he thought was the right bus, but it turned out to be the ‘go all round the houses bus’ which gave everyone a brilliant tour of most of the back streets of Seaford, and ended up by the cemetery. So, quelling a desire to go and pay homage to A Famous Belgian once again, the trio hiked along the road , at least half a mile to Froggy’s . It was all his fault, of course, he hadn’t told us not to get the 12A bus instead of the No 12 - what an oversight!
Poor Froggy; not only was he exhausted from the intellectual challenges of making sure everything was going to run to plan, but he had been up half the night cleaning and hoovering so that we should have nothing to complain about when we got there.
Anyway, the food was good ( Banofee pie cookies ) and the drink gave us a choice of two whiskies (Scotch and Irish) and El Paco had turned up despite Lafayette having forgotten to ring him the night before on account of his being rat-arsed at the time.
So everyone indulged themselves greatly and then we were led out on to phase one of today’s ramble.
Everyone stood at the bus stop waving their bus passes in the faces of Froggy and BT
(who hadn’t got them) and then managed to get on the right bus to somewhere near Beachy Head to start off. The road was long and stoney, but straight enough so that there was at this stage no chance of getting lost. However we soon came to a dividing of the ways. Which road to take? Froggy wasn’t sure so out came the Mappa Mundi for reference. El Paco seemed to know the right direction but he was ignored. Froggy twisted the map around, tried to read it upside down, tried murmuring incantations, all to no avail. Paco insisted he knew where to go but Froggy wasn’t having any. Finally two hippy ramblers turned up and pointed us in Paco’s direction. So much for tight organisation! Paco now has a Cassandra complex.
It was a glorious, sunny day and the NERDS were singing along happily. All the little lambs we saw had numbers on them - one for each NERD, there were lots of Old Trout ramblers about, but thankfully they were miles from the pub we intended to invade. Froggy had a bad feeling about this pub, he said the people who ran it were snooty and offhand (so why take us there?) but as it happened the barmaid at The Eight Bells at Jevington was really nice and took to Harry ‘cos her boyfriend had the same name or something (blech! blech!).
We sat in the garden in the sun and Froggy was made to serve us with lots of sauces and condiments and stuff while we gave him marks out of ten for fetching and carrying . He got so flustered at one point that he told us he’d got a barrow in his family (Is this a sort of welsh family burial plot?). But when the food came (we all had meaty pie) the pies all had tons of meat in them and there were loads of chips so the food was definitely ’NERDS approved.‘ Froggy said he was never given any vegetables as a kid and that’s why he himself nearly grew up as a meaty pie -
different taste, though.
We staggered on for the second half of the ramble (exactly three miles, not a metre more, not a metre less) and got taken along a nasty, horrible, busy road with lots of wizzy cars going passed us. Eventually we hit woody fieldy areas again , trouble was they were mostly in the direction of up and Lafayette’s bowels began to play up too. Whether it was the excess of calvados taken the night before or his wife’s chile con carne he had had at breakfast (magic stuff!) he could contain himself no longer and had to wander off for an emergency crap. Good job there was a nice copse further up the hill where he could squat and wallow! Pity there weren’t any goats or Pakistanis to make sure he had a nice clean bum afterwards - like in the old days, but Hey! You can’t expect everything laid on for you.
When he returned to the fold Lafayette found the rest of the NERDS all flaked out lying in the middle of a very pleasant meadow, evidently the heavy lunch and the unaccustomed rigorous and disciplined activity had taken its toll. Lafayette let them slumber awhile and then woke them gently with a thunderous fart.
We carried on ever upwards it seemed but eventually descended another pleasant meadow into East Dean where The Tiger (pub) was waiting for us. Here they sold ‘Legless Rambler’ beer (and I’m not kidding!) which came from the Beachy Head Brewery. ‘I wonder where the Beachy Head Brewery is’ quoth Paco…‘D’oh!’ We all replied. We then spent a very pleasant hour in the late afternoon sun quaffing Legless Ramblers and trying to decide where we should go for the NERDS’ 250th. We decided to disqualify Philby from this since he’d missed a few rambles already this year and we didn’t fancy going to Belgium so soon again, anyway.
And so we all walked back to the bus stop and left Froggy standing when the wrong bus came again. Actually it was the right bus for all of us - it just didn’t happen to take Froggy back exactly to his front door (as planned).
And so another superlative ramble combining fantastic weather, good food and absolutely impeccable planning from Froggy. We all hope that BT gets home OK because Lafayette has nearly run out of red wine and calvados.
Looking forward to the 250th , you NERDS. (wherever the fuck it is!)
Lafayette.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Froggy's joining instuctions for April Ramble
Fellow Nierdos,
Once again t'will be the number 12 bus to Eastbourne Downs Golf Course, but this time we'll be going in the opposite direction towards the Eight Bells in Jevington (which does fabulous Bambi Burgers). According to that wonderful tool; Google Map Distance Calculator, it is precisely 3 miles before lunch and precisely 3 miles after lunch back to the Tiger Inn, East Dean which is now open all day, every day. There will be about a mile of road walking, out of Jevington but the rest of the walk will all be off piste. The only bit of climbing will be that path with the telegraph poles which goes up towards Friston Pond from ButchersHole Bottom. After the Tiger, we can all pile onto another no 12 and just like the last time; exercise our individual preferences for what comes next.
Brian, you and I will need to get a day rover bus ticket. Lord Charles, could you please remember the whip purse?
As there will be a certain amount of flexibility needed in all meeting up (Harry off nights for starters, so he might need to be collected from the station) it would be best if everyone came to chez moi (via the stop at Newlands school and the cut through to Harrison Road for the busses and via the twitten by the 7 Sisters for a walking Paco). We'll have to start walking by 11:00 (bus at Newlands @ 10:40) to get a good seat & beat the Old Trouts!, so I suggest getting to mine between 09:15 and 09:30 for drinks and biks.
Matt & Mike! Just look at what you're missing!!!
See you all on Wednesday 21st April
Flip Flop Frog One
ps For those of you who like to see where they are going, you can see the entire walk through Google Maps (Satellite) by typing in Jevington,UK...............
Once again t'will be the number 12 bus to Eastbourne Downs Golf Course, but this time we'll be going in the opposite direction towards the Eight Bells in Jevington (which does fabulous Bambi Burgers). According to that wonderful tool; Google Map Distance Calculator, it is precisely 3 miles before lunch and precisely 3 miles after lunch back to the Tiger Inn, East Dean which is now open all day, every day. There will be about a mile of road walking, out of Jevington but the rest of the walk will all be off piste. The only bit of climbing will be that path with the telegraph poles which goes up towards Friston Pond from ButchersHole Bottom. After the Tiger, we can all pile onto another no 12 and just like the last time; exercise our individual preferences for what comes next.
Brian, you and I will need to get a day rover bus ticket. Lord Charles, could you please remember the whip purse?
As there will be a certain amount of flexibility needed in all meeting up (Harry off nights for starters, so he might need to be collected from the station) it would be best if everyone came to chez moi (via the stop at Newlands school and the cut through to Harrison Road for the busses and via the twitten by the 7 Sisters for a walking Paco). We'll have to start walking by 11:00 (bus at Newlands @ 10:40) to get a good seat & beat the Old Trouts!, so I suggest getting to mine between 09:15 and 09:30 for drinks and biks.
Matt & Mike! Just look at what you're missing!!!
See you all on Wednesday 21st April
Flip Flop Frog One
ps For those of you who like to see where they are going, you can see the entire walk through Google Maps (Satellite) by typing in Jevington,UK...............
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