I like the Great Outdoors but I like to admire if from the other side of a window. But this attitude isn't going to help when we're going to be taking six days to cross Mongolia which doesn't - if I understand the situation fully - have a huge number of supermarkets along the route.
A bullet had to be bitten and a first experience of camping had to be undertaken. Now I'm not for one minute saying that a nights camping in Bournemouth is going to compare but surely it all helps.
Worryingly we packed the whole boot with stuff. Bearing in mind this was just for two people, for one night I think we may have to re-think our strategy when we've added a third person and we're off for thirty nights.
I think it's fair to say that our complete lack of navigational ability was highlighted when we tried to find the campsite. Firstly it was about ten miles away from Yucels house. Secondly we were using GPS. Even with this two things in our favour we still had to phone through for directions. Really, this wasn't a good omen.
Having arrived we got the tent pitched with relative ease and set about getting some dinner. Having discounted the possibility of snaring a rabbit or eating a raw squirrel it was decided that the most sensible course of action was for Yucel to heat some water to boil pasta and then mix some Dolmio sauce with it.
The first casualty of camping is excitement and standing in the middle of field lost its novelty pretty much as soon as we'd eaten. It was getting dark and so grabbed the torch and wandered up the lane to see what was there.
Twenty minutes later we were sitting in a pub with a couple of pints in front of us, our hands smelling of lavendar and patchouli oil from the campite bathrooms and we were wondering whether we were really roughing it. It was obviously a close all.