Angry Farmers
March 10, 2008 at 11:36 am | Trip | No comment
“What about this one?” Alex asks.
I inspect the side road; it’s hard to tell in the dark. “Worth a look.”
We roll up the road and find lovely grassy fields fenced off on either side.
“Perfect” I declare, leaping out of the car and throwing stuff out of the boot.
After parking up Alex joins me at what is starting to look like a reasonable camp site, Rip the Jack Russell cross looks on with interest.
With setting up camp out of the way we turn our attention to the food and the newly acquired petrol stove.
Filling it up is a bit of a messy affair, with not inconsiderable amount of petrol getting spilt on the grass.
“Careful Alex, that’s one flammable bit of field”
We get the stove going eventually and set about trying to fry bacon in a saucepan.
“It’s not frying” Alex tells me disconcertedly.
“What?”
“It’s not frying, it’s boiling”
Sure enough, the cheap petrol-station meat has had so much water injected into it the damn thing’s actually boiling in the saucepan instead of frying.
But despite our setbacks we have a rather good meal of couscous, chopped tomatoes and boiled bacon.
I start cracking open a bottle of wine when suddenly “WHOOMPH” and a large portion of the field sets ablaze.
“Holy shit!”
Fearing an explosion that would level our little campsite I fling the petrol can as far away as possible, then start stamping wildly at the water bottles that have ironically caught fire.
“I didn’t think it would do that…” Alex admits rather sheepishly.
We both burst out laughing, and having averted disaster (and second degree burns) we sit back down to our meal.
Three bottles of wine and a solid few hours of sleep later I’m rudely awoken by
“Oi, what d’ya think you’re doing?”
I wriggle out of my sleeping bag through the haze of a hangover and wrestle with the zipped tent door for a good three minutes.
“Morning!” I reply.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“We’re peaceably setting up a tent!” I slur.
“Well you can peaceably piss off, and take your shit with your, else it’s coppers!”
“Fair ‘nuff”
We hurriedly pack up our shit and get out of there, but not before noticing in the brisk light of day that the field we’d chosen to camp in was just off the main road to the farm house!
Oops.. Not quite the out-of-the-way spot we’d thought it was in the dark!