ODT Tour Blog 1: Brighton
This weekend The Outdoor Types first tour of England and Wales began in Brighton. The plan was that this was to be a dry run for the second leg of the tour which will take in Exeter, Cardiff and Liverpool later this week. Drive down on Saturday, camp at a farm in Henfield, play the gig on Sunday, drive back on bank holiday Monday. What could possibly go wrong?
Luke and I arrived at the campsite on saturday evening and met everyone else in the pub, getting there just in time to watch an excellent exhibition match between Barcelona and some other team whose name escapes me right now. We pulled up to the venue the following day not knowing quite what to expect. As it turns out, The Green Door Store (@greendoorstore on Twitter) is a very cool cellar style bar set in the railway arches beneath Brighton station.
The gig went brilliantly. We couldn’t have asked for a better way to kick off the tour. There was a great turn-out and the audience really got on board, which is always nice. Afterwards we headed back to the campsite where we imbibed into the wee hours whilst playing the celebrity alphabet game for an exceedingly long time.
On bank holiday monday Luke and I said goodbye to the rest of the crew, picked up my girlfriend Wendy, who had been staying at her cousin’s house in Shoreham-by-Sea, then went for a mooch round the record shops and vintage boutiques of Brighton. We left at about six o’clock and after we’d been travelling for a while we noticed that the heating on Luke’s 1987 Toyota Space Cruiser wasn’t working. Assuming that the heating unit had packed up and not knowing any better we carried on. It was only when I said I smelt burning that we realised something was seriously awry. We pulled over to the hard shoulder of the M23 with a now quite considerable amount of smoke billowing from beneath the once mighty Space Cruiser. By sheer luck, Luke had recently upgraded his current account to one that included AA roadside assistance so he called them up and in a little over 10 minutes a mechanic arrived. He took a quick look at the engine and confirmed our worst fears: the engine’s head gasket had blown.
A long and intense journey then followed where we were towed back to Tufnell Park via central London. Once we arrived we had to carry all the gear up a hill from where we’d parked the Space Cruiser to Luke’s house. By the time we’d moved all the instruments and equipment up the hill it was gone Eleven and Wendy and I still had to get the tube back to Tooting with all our luggage.
So Brighton was great until we tried to leave and then it all went a bit wrong. Here’s hoping the rest of the tour is a tad less dramatic!
Gordy
(photos by Wendy Venables, @Wendables on Twitter, can be seen here: http://on.fb.me/mrrT7M)
The Outdoor Types will be continuing their tour (though probably not in the Space Cruiser) on:
2nd of June at The Cavern in Exeter
3rd of June at The Buffalo Bar in Cardiff
and 4th of June at Bumper in Liverpool
See you all there!
