Don't panic -Siouxsie says it will be alright

 My last full day in work, and the enormity of the task was starting to sink in. I have managed to work out a route through some of Scotland's awesome West Coast, across several islands  before turning  back south along the iconic  A9  through the famous Speyside glen before threading my way past Edinburgh, the lowlands and back to England and home to South Wales. It involves 55 distilleries, 30 tours/tastings and not to mention a small issue of 2,500 miles, riding 20 ferries, and 17 hotels/B&Bs.

So, the last night of preparation could have done without discovering the luggage doesn't fit, and it didn't help having to re-arrange the itinerary because a distillery cancelled on me. The camera case somehow got smaller but is was all a bit tight. Then where do I put the 30 Welsh Cakes and half dozen Toberones and still leave room to purchase some distillery exclusive single malts?

The little item shown opposite is one of Diageo's Rare Malts series of about 50 'expressions' and will cost you at least £500 at auction, and no, I haven't got one.

So I crammed the camera into the top box on the bike, took Siouxsie at her word and prayed it would be OK tomorrow.

Just who is Siouxsie and what is her part in this

     As you might expect, preparations for this immense trip are quite well advanced, routes have been planned, ferries have been paid for, hotels chosen and booked. All in all it was going well. So, then it went wrong. Whilst booking hotels is now a simple task, yes Booking.com seem to think I'm some kind of genius, probably because I've booked 19 rooms in 19 separate accommodations. I wish I could say the same about the distilleries. And to make things worse I decided a dash-cam was a good idea, only I would construct it myself with help from Siouxsie. Then there was the problem of navigation - last time I tried this I got lost several times a day, could I use my phone for sat-nav?

     Photographically I had a digital camera and the knowledge of having done this before at the Isle of Man TT back in 2007 , so I invested in a 110 fitting handlebar clamp, a 110 to 1/4 inch camera mount and a 1/4 inch  tripod 360 degree adaptor. This should give the camera a secure mounting behind the screen but crucially above the faring.

     And it worked after 3 days of fiddling and testing, filming the road, the sky, the mirror, but mostly the sky, I got it shooting correctly. Flushed with success, I turned my attention to the Sat-Nav issue, a trial was conducted at the British Masters Championships in Derby, largely because the car's maps were too far out of date, but I did need to know. Yes at 10:00pm somewhere on the A38 the phone sat-nav got lost on a non-existent section of the A50 and  followed that by going flat in the middle of Derby's one way system after just 2 hours service.

      My solution was to install a USB socket onto the handlebars of the bike to provide constant charging of the phone whilst it resided in my pocket with me listening intently via the earphones. This, Siouxsie informed me, was the perfect solution. Weeeellllll - not quite. The USB socket has a blue LED to indicate it is on, 2 days after installing it, the bike's battery was flat! Note to self: I must remember to switch it off overnight.

    It became apparent that selfies were possible but self-videos were not, so I have enlisted the old fashioned technique of the timer and the tripod seen strapped pole vault style across the back seat - fingers crossed with that one when I found it too big for top box and panniers alike. Siouxsie assures me it'll be perfectly safe.

 

     Now, with the multi-media all sorted, I just have to figure out where to put 50 bottles of single malt whisky, any thoughts Siouxsie?