I'VE ALWAYS PROMISED MYSELF...

...that I wouldn't go near the keyboard after I have been down the pub. 'S'obvious why really, as your thingers and fumbs don't work in the right order and your grey matter comes out with all the outrageous stuff that you always wanted to say but were far tooooo sensible to put into print - well, cyberspace, anyway.

Tonight, 'I has mostly been' a whirling dervish of activity. I have packed the most humunngously huge rucksack for the coming weekend. I have cooked and eaten a wonderful dinner, watched the woefully won Masterchef, finished off Torchwood and been down the lane to see Dave the Chicken and the Farmer in the Axe.

It's all go in this village idyll, you know.

The humungously huge rucksack is in fact the normal job, but filled with delicacies such as binoculars, Boss jeans, bacon sandwiches and good shoes (and a little flask of the good stuff too) as this weekend, Lord Elpus and I are not roughing it. No. Roughing it we are not. In fact it will all be rather civilised as we stroll westwards on the South Downs Way to our B&B and then westwards again until we have had enough, admit defeat and take a cab back to the car.

You do realise that we are only demeaning ourselves like this for Phil's B-in-Law, Hobbsy, (Miss Whiplash's brother) so that he can return home in some sort of ordered, and sanitized state. Not for him the smelly armpit. Oh no. Not for him the rumpled hiking hotel trouser. Not for him the unshaven cheek and tousled greasy mane.

No: David has had enough of all that nonsense; he spent two weeks dragging his smelly carcase across Scotland with Lord Elpus a few years back on the TGO Challenge. Our 'Obbsy has got older and smarter and has persuaded Lord E and I to lean back and smell the roses. To lighten our loads. To go Ultralight.

This ultralight thing is easy with no tent, mattress, sleeping bag, cooker, pots, food.....

More from the front-line with live on the trail blogging tomorrow!