Thanks for signing me up APD. I see food is included, but I will bring my stove for the tent. Should still be at home the preceding Friday, so likely we can meet at the M5 south/somewhere like that as planned.

Was working on the prep for this trip last weekend, nearly done/packed.

PMSL; that was the second crunch. The first crunch was in my laptop bag. The third crunch was in a suit pocket pushing the Subaru with a blown head gasket. Fingers crossed, the paperwhite has so far stood up to everything, even camping in Oz and NZ and tonnes of flights. Even if it doesn't, £33 of i...

Kindle paperwhite is what you want for reading at night. A lot nicer than reading on a normal tablet (plus the battery will last for weeks) a ND it has the advantage of being able to take hundreds of books and pdf manuals for your bike and camping gadgets. They are, when wrapped in the Official case...

http://i1063.photobucket.com/albums/t514/Torquelle/Bikes%20-%20Miscellaneous/Campinginthewoods.jpg One bike, one sleeping bag, one forest. Perfect. I've been through the whole thread and that's my personal favourite. Considering the amount of Rally Porn and the HP2, that is high praise indeed: Abso...

GSA. If the choice was the old 990 (or 950) instead of the 1190 however, I'd go for the KTM, unless it was a solely "fire roads and tarmac" trip.

I've heard that despite being in such a low state of tune, they devour consumables like a fat kid at a buffet. Not so much of a problem if you're in India, where every tiny village will have someone with spares for them, but in the rest of the world, it might be a problem on a long trip unless you c...

On a related note: Always tether tool tubes with a couple of jubilee clips/similar, or (if you're not fussed about it being waterproof) heat some lockwire up and stick it through the body of the tube to create a secondary 'tether'. The most popular tool tube amongst the adventure riding community is...

I talk as a payment security industry professional: The people saying run a mile as soon as you hear Western Union are largely correct. The best way to consider money sent through Western Union is directly analagous to "teleported the money, in cash" to the person you sent it to. It's very...

A few things that I personally found useful. Forget about the bike for a bit and get into hiking/camping in general. Aside from it being useful experience, you'll find that you learn from necessity how to pack small/light: You really find out what necessary means, if you have to lug every little lux...

Go to Oz for a bit, I promise you that UK spiders will seem very 'cute' afterwards.