Back to Life

So some of our more avid readers have noted in private conversations of late that there has been over a month between posts on everyone's favorite online journal, and there are few excuses for this laziness.

Basically your reporter, B A Tron has been struck down by a bad case of horrible routine. It is near impossible to come up with a weekly column of pure adventure and wit when you have fallen into a terrible rut of inactivity and boredom. The crowd keeps demanding more but I haven't been able to deliver. Things have become so bad, in fact, that when the opportunity to change the world came up I have to admit I passed. As our sister site reports (http://ficklish.blogspot.com/) recently 4500 Londoner's dared to dream enough
to set out and break one of the hardest records there is, they joined forces

and brought art to the masses as the Worlds Largest Coconut Orchestra (here is a YouTube link of the event).


(Joe Knorks, APF, and the Fonz at the event)

Now you may ask what is a Coconut Orchestra? and how does one go about becoming a coconut record holder? Well basically it is a situation where a couple thousand monkeys get together and bang too halves of a coconut together in order to make a beat- sound fun? you bet is does.

So why hasn't this story appeared on Funtheque before now? Because the rut the great B A Tron had fallen into was so deep that he passed on this once in a life time opportunity. That's how bad things had gotten.

But no more.

With the onset of summer, and the generosity of the British Government in giving me a Bank Holiday. I decided it was time to break out of the rut by going on B A Tron's and Joe Knorks Amazing and Excellent Adventure (tm) .

I decided that the only way to break the mold and haul myself out of this funk was to go on a one day jaunt through the heart of England. A day filled with so much adventure and excitement I couldn't help but begin to live again.

Here is a map of the adventure route:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=Hackney&daddr=Heathrow+Airport+to%3AStonehenge+to%3ABadminton+to%3ABath+to%3AHeathrow+Airport+to%3AHackney,+UK&mrcr=5&sll=51.47015,-1.410165&sspn=4.76421,2.955322&ie=UTF8&om=1&ll=51.407773,-1.137085&spn=1.207828,2.570801&z=9

So with my trusty side kick Joe Knorks as always loyally at my side we set off from the Pickle on a cold and dreary 6:30 AM morning with nothing but an open road before us and adventure on our minds. The first step was to catch the bus to Holborn, so that we could get the tube to Heathrow, so we could then get the hire car for the day- I know, it seems ridiculous that anyone would take an hour and a half just to get to the place where the hire car was, but that's just the kind of town London is. And don't think for a moment it was an hour and a half of pure mind numbing boredom in the early hours- no, I can advise anyone who comes to London that the Piccadilly line to Heathrow is one of the most exciting Tube journeys on the map!

So anyways, we finally get to Heathrow just after eight, and catch the courtesy bus out to the car rental place to hire out fantastic British version Em Mobile.


After a brief period of uncertainty I remembered how to drive again and we were off to our first port of call, you may have heard of it: STONEHENGE


(From Top: Joe Knorks hamming it up, BA Tron in the 4 the Grandkids shot, You can't see it but the yellow hat is a wallabies hat- two cheap arse aussies not paying the entry fee, and B A Tron playing the man of steel)

Stonehenge has been there about 5000 years which is quite impressive, and they rocks were very big, and it was in the middle of no where, but really overall it was a little underwhelming. Maybe not worth the 3 quid we had to fork out for the right to do a lap of the henge. Anyways, we did have quite a lot of fun hamming it up and taking silly photos.

So, it was time move on we got back into the mighty mobile and headed off for the Horse Trials at Badminton. It was about an hours drive but we managed to get lost, Joe Knorks having forgotten to pack the maps. But the beauty of England is its so small that you can get yourself out of trouble pretty easily, we eventually arrived at the Horse Trials, only to find that the main attraction, the wonderful Zara Phillips had pulled out, apparently she was too scarred. Doesn't bode well for her olympic chances, you need heart to take olympic gold, kind of like Aussie legend Matt Ryan (pictured) and his horse Bonza Katoomba.
The horse trials were fasanating. There were thousands of people there and the Jumps were huge. Evidence:

The horsey set were also quite funny, lots of popped colars and puffa vests. As we arrived at the grounds the sun came out so it was really quite a fantastic afternoon, walking miles over this huge country estate watching every now and then as a horse went by- good times.

Some of the jumps were a little confronting to see the horses go over live. The water, and sunken road jumps were sort of heart in the mouth type moments when ever horse and rider game to jump them. It was also a little confronting the next day to find out that two horses didn't last the night after doing battle with the Badminton Course. But overall I would recommend getting along to the horse trials to anyone.

So I bet your thinking that after fitting so much into our day all ready that Joe Knorks and I would be about ready to head back to London, but no such partyers are we that we decided to head south and check out historic and beautiful Bath.

Which I do have to say is quite historic and beautiful, the entire town, at least the bits they let you see are Georgian (no idea) architecture straight out of Jane Austin movies. We walked around the stone streets, went to the 17th century Abbey, almost went to the Roman Bath's (but there was a long line and they were charging 10 quid), sat at a local cricket ground in the sun, walked around the weir, and went to some cool markets- really quite a fun town.
However by this time we were both so tired that speech had stopped, the smiles were gone, and Joe Knorks' Dwags were barking so loud that people were looking at us. We decided to leave, unfortunately we parked at the top of a big hill so we couldn't walk very quickly. Funnily enough we parked on a street with a funny name, it was called 'Gay street' oh how we laughed.

Finally we were made it to the car and turned the mighty English version of the Em Mobile for London and home- or so we thought, after some brief navigation issues we decided to just go fast and hope we found the highway- luckily we did.

The M4 is a big six lane highway running east west from Bristol to London, and it is full of crazy maniac's going as fast as they possibly can. It was one of the most frightening experiences of my life, we were in this very small car going very very fast. At one point I looked down and realized we were being overtaken when we were going 100 miles per hour, it was all a bit helter skelter. Now, remember I have ridden in the kloss mobile at these sorts of speeds and havn't been scared, BUT this wasn't the kloss mobile.

The only could thing about racing across England at 130-160 KM's an hour is you can cross England really quickly at those speeds so we finally got back Heathrow at around 8 PM. Great we thought, home at last, but finding the Eurocar place, and a fuel station to fill the car up turned out to be a challenge, and frightening in its own way. We came out of a tunnel at one point and I swear to god a Lufthansa Airbus 330 landed on our heads, the car shook it came so close- we freaked. After half an hour we finally found fuel and got back to the Eurocar place and returned the England version of the Em Mobile.

Just before we left the rent a car place we got another flight, the Eurocar office is right next to the runway (like 70 metres) and a 747 took off right in front of us- it was loud, very, very loud. Joe Norks nearly cried but luckily I there to be the strong silent type.

So that's it- the most jam packed day in the history of the world- we finally got back to the Pickle at 11 pm - 17 hours after we left- that's touristing ladies and gentlemen- pure touristing.