October 2017 Ramble arrangements.

All hail NERDS,

This month we walk on Wednesday 18th. This time we are going to relive a popular walk from a year or so. We are lunching at The Downs Hotel in Woodingdean - BEFORE the ramble. This received the prestigious NERDS Approved kitemark last time. After lunch we hit the footpaths leading to Rottingdean and the buses home.

So 2 buses to our lunch destination. We will meet for a coffee at Starbucks in Churchill Square at 10.30-ish prior to taking the second omnibus. Hope you can all make it.

Lafayette - any sign of the write-up for September? Has the Muse deserted you?

Sandyballs

October 2017 Ramble date

Dear NERDS,

Looks like Wed 18th October will be the date of the next ramble.

Thanks for all your replies.

No further news on Barbara so far.

Cheers.

Laf.

October 2017 Ramble dates

Dearest NERDS,

Barbara is temporarily in hospital so Harry has asked me to get a date for October's ramble.

Je vous propose either Wed 18th or Wed 25th October. Please let me know which you could do and I shall then pick one.



Lafayette.

September 2017 Ramble Joining Instructions

H'yall!

The next ramble is due to take place on Wednesday 13th September. There will be a change of lunch venue and substantially reduced walking. The original plan was to walk to Upper Dicker via Arlington from Berwick Station. However, Peter's Yew Tree no longer opens at 11:00 and 12:00 would leave it far too late to squeeze in the walk to the Plough and get seated ahead of the ”vielles truites”!

So, could those leaving from Seaford & Newhaven please take a R/T to Lewes on the 10:25 train (Newhaven Town 10:32). Once at Lewes, we shall be strolling down to Waitrose and catching the 11:32 no 28 bus to Ringmer, arriving at 11:44, just after the Anchor has opened at 11:30. Harry will be joining us for a drink before taking Barbara to hospital and Malcolm will be arriving @ 12:00 to join us for lunch!

The afternoon's walking is still a work in progress

and will depend on various factors such as weather,

general fitness & circles in the head........

See y'all next week.

Guest Route Master Froggy

 Xx

The August 2017 Ramble

NERDS' Ramble No. 333. 16th August 2017.

Those Present – Sandyballs, Lafayette, Froggy, Matt, Curly, Paco, The Captain.

The Ramble where we all got lost but where it turned out all right in the end.

It was a Wednesday, the weather looked promising, the NERDS were out in force (look how many we were today!) and Sandyballs had concocted another exciting re-cycled ramble for us. We all rushed over to platform 1 at Lewes

to get the train to Cooden Beach – no time for Lafayette to get a ticket – Newhaven station had failed yet again in this respect – so he was working out his grounds of appeal as he ran. Luckily on the train to C.B. there was a sympathetic guard (John)

who sussed out we were not just another old mens' stag do and flogged Laf. a ticket without fining him – Phew!

On arrival at Cooden Beach The Captain decided to go cottaging since the bogs round there looked a cut above those in Seaford and he thought the rent-boys might be too. In fact the area was super posh and the inhabitants seemed to consist of genteel old ladies walking their pedigree hounds around.

One of them informed Sandyballs he was lost already and maybe he'd better hold his map

the right way up; while another gave us a lecture on how she couldn't get her butler to take Churchill (her dog) out to shit any more, and how terrible it was that the council planned to build a housing estate in her back garden. The NERDS touched their forelocks and moved on abashed.

We walked through some really refined suburbs where the houses and gardens were spacious, well-kept and expensive looking. It was Golden Triangle after Golden Triangle and Matt was most impressed; he kept sniffing the air for some strange reason.

Eventually Sandyballs led us to a sort of wood

which we were supposed to penetrate to get us on to the next leg of our exciting adventure. Except, no way could we find our way in. Lafayette was hoping the wood would be full of scantily clad green fairies (hint, hint, Brian)

who would fly away with him to Paradise. Or perhaps he'd just got mixed up with the idea of converting to Islam to get his leg over.

There was a lot of shaking of heads, back tracking, stupid suggestions (like, “how about we look at a proper map”)

until we found about three farm tracks which led off away from the wood (and the fairies) but which seemed a better bet than just standing around all day scratching our arses and not doing anything.

So we went along this track.

It was obviously a private track as evidenced by the strings of er, string that were tied across to try to stop you going through. Not that the NERDS cared for we were getting thirsty. It was clear we were entering farming territory. There was cow shit all over the road and barns and things. Visions of farmers, shotguns and “ get off of moy laand!”

sprang to mind, but fortunately nothing actually happened. Maybe the farmer was taking a C/L day or something.

We came across a field of gentle brown cows troughing water out of a trough

( see, told you we were in a farm). Paco tried to pat one but got his hand frazzled by an electric fence.

Well, at least we knew now not to go in that field; thanks Paco. One of the cows had a funny plastic thing with spikes on sticking out of its nose. Wha? Either it's a punk cow or else it's to stop it brown nosing its colleagues. Weird, anyway.

We got out of the farm and into the open countryside.

The sun was out and we were getting thirstier. Sandyballs' map let him down once again. We could see where we wanted to go (as the crow flies)

we even thought we could see the pub but our way was inhibited by field after field of fieldy stuff and most of these were bordered by swampy streams and bullrushy type vegetation. Round and round we went but kept coming back to the swampy stream. We backtracked, dithered, faffed, listened to Froggy's well thought out advice, dithered and faffed some more and came to the reluctant conclusion that we were lost.

Even Sandyballs was persuaded of this huge uncontroversial truth.

So what to do? And we were now getting really thirsty. Nothing for it but to seek higher ground and head for the main road. This is not what you're supposed to do on a ramble in the country. You're supposed to talk to cows, get a bit muddy perhaps, burn your fingers on electic fences and be abducted by green fairies (yes, Brian) but you're emphatically not supposed to walk along main roads and get nearly assassinated by psychopathic lorry drivers.

Luckily, a little way along the road we came across a service station cum mini-mart. Lafayette dived in and bought himself a Mars bar and a Magnum ice cream – just to keep him going until breakfast the following morning or whatever the next meal might be. The others bought similar trashy stuff and sat outside in the shade on a wall to eat it. Sandyballs reckoned he knew the way now. “Just a few hundred yards and round this next corner.” he promised. Ha, ha.

On, on we staggered along the hot, metalled road. Then over a stile and into the unknown again. Fortunately this time the geography of the fields seemed to make some sort of sense and were not bound by raging torrents, deep crevasses or baying velociraptors. It was still hot and sunny but fortunately there was a pleasant breeze from the nearby sea. Sandyballs was worried that a certain Mystery Guest ( obviously Shirley Wurly) was going to blow us out, us being a bit late an' all, but when we got to The Star Inn at Normans' Bay he found she had texted him three hours previously to say she'd run off somewhere with Can of Beans instead.

The outside of The Star Inn

was packed with screaming kids and bickering parents – school holidays, see. So we went inside and S.B. scored a table

Matt took so long getting his drink that we were all sat down when he arrived, and despite his usual representations about moving there was nowhere else to go.
The Harvey's was £4 a pint, but then so it is in Nieuweshafen these days. However, the food was listed in easy to pay chunks. Like, most main courses were £10, and most desserts were £5.

More to the point the roast meals, fish pies, and steaks were all excellent and the waitress service was pretty prompt too. All in all this place lived up to its deserved reputation of being NERDS' approved.

Later on S.B. elicited the return train time from the waitress (whose name we unfortunately forgot to ask. But who impressed us with her willingness to help. Lafayette suspects he and Sandyballs may have to make a return journey to ask her name

and to thank her properly.) Anyway the train was due-ish so we idled out of the pub and nonched down towards the station. All of a sudden, about fifty yards from the station someone said the barrier had gone down and the train was coming. Trouble is fifty yards is a long way when you're a NERD and you've had about three pints. However since there wasn't another train for an hour everyone ran like hell and fortunately made the train without anybody keeling over.

After this bit of excitement we all travelled to Eastbourne where the Seaford lot got a bus, and where the rest went on to Lewes and points south.

This had been a sort of interesting ramble which had provided much excitement, tension, frustration and pain (Paco's hand). Thanks go to Sandyballs for trying to organise it all and to Allah for making it go all right in the end. ( See, Lafayette has finally converted and is looking forward to spending his time in Paradise with his seventy virgin, green fairies – it must be true, it's all in The Koran.)

Next ramble is Wednesday 13th September when Froggy will be Routemaster and will take us to Pete's at Arlington, and to The Plough somewhere else.

Nothing can possibly go wrong.

Lafayette.

July's Ramble 2017

NERDS' Ramble No. 332 Wed. 12th July 2017.


Those Present – Sandyballs, Lafayette, Froggy, Matt, Curly, The Bish.

Special Guest – Steady Eddie.

The Devil's Own Ramble.

Starbucks'

seems to be the current watering hole of choice for the NERDS. We seem to start off from here quite frequently now. Perhaps it's indicative of the new bus-based rambles which are now taking place, and which have been thoughtfully packaged to spare our poor aged legs from having to make too much effort. Yes, lol, later on we were to see the flaw in this presumption.

And so we mingled upstairs in Starbucks with the (other) jeunesse doré of Brighton, you know, the ones that are trying to impress the opposite sex (usually) with their sense of fashion, their devotion to intellectual texts, their scintillating chat-up lines etc. etc. Anyway, the vieillesse doré sat drinking cafe stuff having sent Matt off to Marks to get some bottled water. He came back somewhat late encumbered with all the Ann Summers packages he had suddenly and inexplicably found attached to him. Hoorah! Froggy finally got the lacy under-nicks he wanted

(see Worthing ramble) and Lafayette would look nice in that red basque.

Shortly afterwards

we boarded the number 77 bus to Devil's Dyke

and were bitterly disappointed to find it was not open top. Sandyballs took this up with the driver, emphasising the fact that we were well known celebrities (ie. NERDS) with a (in fact two) famous writers amongst us, but his representations were in vain.

The bus was actually quite comfortable and kitted out in some sort of wizzy wizzy black and white paint job and cartoons obviously designed to appeal to foreign tourists. Still, at least we didn't get our hair blown off.

The journey was exciting. We passed the school where The Bish had been taught to be a Bish, we passed all the posh houses of the Brighton rich and upper classery, and we learned that Froggy's son had been given a 3d printer so that he could build a facsimile of his father

when he was absent on NERDS' rambles, and could worship him and pay tribute to his latent qualities as a brilliant literary figure and unsung rock star.

We arrived at Devil's Dyke – or more appropriately at Devil's Dyke Inn. Although the weather was a bit dull you could still see for miles, and that day there were no stupid hang gliders blocking the view or trying to kill each other in their quests for individual space.

The only snag about this pub is that the service is crap, (one person on to serve all the tourists), and the beer is crap (Black Sheep ran out almost immediately),

although as has been mentioned, the view over all of East and West Sussex goes on forever.

About midday we were joined by a Special Guest from the Gatwick Darkside (Lafayette's other minor rambling club which allows girlies to take part.) This was Steady Eddie Coombe who lived in the region and did a lot of walking. (Too much according to Lafayette, especially since he was twenty years younger than Laf. and liked to set long, long rambles before getting all the girlies pissed – but those are other stories). Ed had a drink with us

and was then initiated into the Mysteries of the NERDS (like, buy us a drink and we'll follow you anywhere.)

So he did and so we did because Ed reckoned he knew a quick route to Poynings where we were due to have lunch.

Trouble was we were all perched at the top of Devil's Dyke and Poynings was way, way far below. Also, the previous evening it had rained a lot.

Ed's route was er... a bit steep. And a bit muddy.

And a bit dead dangerous when you considered everybody's age, medical conditions and mental health (Especially this.) The Bish nearly ended up going roly poly straight to the bottom and most of us felt we had bitten off a bit more than we normally chew. However we finally achieved ground level

and were led to The Royal Oak, probably the only pub in the village.

The place was quite popular. There were lots of people eating who were not actually covered in mud and scratched to hell. Lafayette managed through his charm and charisma to blag a table for seven indoors while at the same time Matt was attempting to change tables and get everyone to sit outside where it was cold and lonely.

What was different and very effective about The Oak was that there were waiters/waitresses who came up to your table armed with a tablet to take your order and relay it straight to the kitchen. Most of us had fish and chips or sausages and mash

– NERDS have no imagination – but the quality was very good so were the puddings although the prices were a little on the steep side. Matt and Curly sat discussing the relative merits of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling

– a programme of which they were both fans, while our waitress, Emma, obliged us by taking lots of photos of NERDS

so that the blog would have something new and fresh to show its readers.

Most of us hadn't realised that to get back to Brighton we had to climb back up to Devil's Dyke to get the bus. If you thought going down was tough try walking back up. After a “good” lunch and several pints of Harveys Lafayette was feeling the strain.

Even Matt behind whom he was struggling remarked on Laf's wheezing.

Happily the NERDS reached the top where Ed and Laf. shared a last drink before Ed disappeared back home to recover from the shock of finding out what the NERDS were really like.

Back in Brighton everyone said farewell to Sandyballs and thanked him for taking us on an interesting bus route. Ed could be blamed for turning it into a ramble the likes of which we had not seen for some time. Poynings had been an interesting village with The Royal Oak well worth a visit. Oh well back to the girlies and the Darkside for Laf. He can't get into any trouble there at least.

Next ramble Wednesday August 16th (2017)

Lafayette.

Joining Instructions July 2017

As previously indicated, the NERDS march on Wednesday 12th. This time we are going to reprise a successful bus ride/ramble from last summer - although I believe Lafayette missed out last time. We will take the 77 bus from Churchill Square up to Devil's Dyke, possibly sample some of the beverage being dispensed at the Inn, then proceed to walk to Poynings for lunch. Wonderful views can be guaranteed. Convivial company can only be hoped for.........

So the usual meet in Starbucks at Churchill Square at about 10.30-ish. Don't forget the hat and suntan cream for the open-top bus!

Sandyballs

July 2017 Ramble

Dear NERDS,

On our last ramble -the bus ride to Worthing - we briefly discussed the date for July. I think it was agreed that we would walk on Wednesday 12th. So if there are no objections we will go with that.I will try to ensure that we do not have to walk quite so far as last time!


SB

The June 2017 Ramble

NERDS' Ramble No. 331. Wed. 21st June 2017.

Those Present: Matt, Sandyballs, Lafayette, Froggy, Paco, Curly.
Snow White and The Five Dwarfs


A couple of weeks ago it had been Matt's birthday.

He was now a hundred and fifteen, and to mark this occasion he had insisted on being made NERDS' Route-Master. The joining instructions were a complete shambles. First of all Lafayette, on the instructions of Sandyballs, had given directions to go to Worthing by train and to meet up along the way. Matt had plotted a Route-Master coup and insisted he was in charge; that the trip would be made by bus

(for reasons of economy) and that we should be dressed as some of the Seven Dwarfs with himself as Snow White.

( Actually Lafayette made up this last bit but it gives B.T. a chance to dig out some pictures.)

Ramble day dawned sunny and hot.

The country had been in the grip of a heatwave for a few days and people were dying in the streets of heat exhaustion – Lafayette loved it. It was like an average day in Pakistan, except that when he had been there in 1985, there had been no Taliban,

he'd spent all his time drinking,

playing cricket

or hash running

and the NERDS had not yet been invented.

And so Four Dwarfs and Snow White went to StarBucks in Brighton

to meet Sandyballs. The latter was currently struggling to come to terms with the fact that he was no longer Routemaster, but Snow White took command and shepherded us all on to the 700 bus to Worthing.

One sweaty hour later we alighted in Worthing where Snow White promised us hours of slogging over concrete roads until we got to some obscure restaurant where she had booked us in for dinner at half past four. Dismay gripped us all. We were dying of too much sun and not enough beer, surely we were not in for a long day of actual rambling. Power must have completely gone to Snow White's head! We traipsed through Worthing centre. There were lots of interesting market stalls and shops but to tarry we were not allowed. Froggy

wanted to buy some boxer shorts to change into at dinner time but even this reasonable request was not allowed.

Eventually Matt steered us all into the Rose and Crown

and generously bought us all a drink a) because we were dying of heat and lack of under pants, and b) because it had been his birthday recently. The pub was nice, the barmaid was nice and there was a pleasant, cool garden outside where we sat round a table.

Matt was keeping an iron grip on the proceedings and insisted on everybody moving to another table since he'd bought us a drink and because he could do what he liked.

Ooooh.... the Power!

When lunchtime came the scramble was on to get “pensioner portions.”

The pub obviously catered for the, ahem, more mature clientele, especially as the restaurant part seemed to be stuffed with oldies who had left their Zimmer frames and mobility scooters outside. Lafayette liked the idea of getting himself a mobility scooter; it might take the slog out of cycling up to Southease or walking back from the Co-op with the usual shopping bag full of wine bottles. He knew that Sandyballs already had his eye on one of those “powered” bicycles that you see advertised in the Sunday papers. Well, why not. NERDS aren't getting any younger. Then Matt could invest in a gilded coach to take him to his cruise ship when he was in one of his “Snow White” days.

Anyway, lunch was terrific and very cheap, and so The NERDS then retired to the lounge

with coffees and brandies

to mull over the implications of Brexit. However instead we ended up listening to Froggy's account of his cowboy holiday in Spain where, apparently, he had faced down Sergio Leone himself in a gunfight and whupped his ass

..... and had then written some doleful ditty about it called “ Gunfight Blues.” which all of Spain was now humming and which had turned him into a famous international writer and earned him the Nobel Prize for crap songs. Lafayette was insanely jealous (not.)

More brandies came,

the conversation veered towards the surreal.

Paco declared that when he died he wanted to have loud Wagner music played at his funeral just to wake up all his neighbours in Seaford and to show that any left wing tendencies he may have had in life had been obliterated by his death bed repentance. Lafayette said he would be pleased to arrange such a conversion and would speak to his friend, Maria Corbyn, the famous all party M.P. about this important matter.

Glad to have put the world to rights yet again, the NERDS were shepherded

back to Brighton where it was still stinking hot, so we decided to go home rather than try to accompany Froggy on his ever constant quest for comfortable undercrackers.

Thanks go to Matt who as an ex- scaffolder employed a delicate touch yet firm grip on us all as that day's Routemaster. Watch out for next month when we might actually do a rural ramble just like in the Olden Days.

Los Nierdos para Siempre!

Lafayette.