Emm's got herself into a small panic, worrying about what to take (or not to take) on the Round Britain Ride...

This whole Round Britain Ride idea seemed like a great wheeze. A complete doddle in fact: pop a couple of panniers on, load 'em up with the obligatory JaffaNobs and putter off for a few days with a mate, vaguely in the direction of the odd Royal Enfield dealership as we went.

But then someone mentioned 'A Root', and 'erself got extremely officious and decided that A Root was probably a good thing to have. So, duly in search of an appropriate piece of cartography, I set off to find a map of the Great British Kingdom Island with legible major road numbers and just a few minor highway and byway markings for good measure.

Let me save you some time: it's not easy to find a good route-planning map of any decent and manageable size. New living room carpet, anyone?

Highlighter pens, map pins, pieces of string, the odd visit to the RAC and AA websites… By the way, there's a reason why one outfit takes longer than the other to reach you: they measure distances differently.

Some semblance of a Root appeared on my living room floor however, and seemed reasonably logical (providing, that is, you have a major squint, and pretend that Market Harborough is on the way from Cambridge to Luton. All right, so I'm not exactly Christopher Columbus when it comes to navigation, but someone had to decide which way round we go. Do you have any idea how many little villages there are called Norton in England? There are at least two Lutons as far as I know… and no one ever believes me when I say I've been to Great Cockup.)

But what should we take? A couple of Allen keys and a few fuses? A plug-spanner? No more than the standard tool kit, or a few extra bits and pieces just for good measure? Answers on a postcard, please, to the usual address, because that's the one that's really bugging me at the moment.

As to luggage: we're navigating our way from hostelry to hostelry via a couple of washing-machines we know, so the Personal Peripherals and Paraphernalia can probably be kept to a minimum.

But what would *you* take as a bare minimum? Charlie Boorman (he of the 'other' trip) suggested that we take baby-wipes as our luxury, gotta-have essential. But we're not stopping in Outer Mongolia, and most Travel Inns have Andrex these days (or so we're led to believe), so baby-wipes are probably one thing we can do without. JaffaNobs and individual sachets of Hot Chocolate on the other hand…

Come to think of it, should we be seriously thinking about eating energy-food (Hurrah!), or taking carbohydrate-filled snacks with us? Or should we rely on copious amounts of Doughnuts, Cornish Pasties and sweet coffee en-route to keep us going? We'll work it all off, as we go round, sitting on our bikes… Won't we. Won't we?

And then, in May, what weather should we expect? The long-range forecasts (hah-hah), predict a 'mild month, with showers'. No surprise there: but that's not much help when it comes to donning both winter-weight and WeallyWaterproof® leggings, or summer-standard and simply showerproof jackets, is it? Gloves, too. Me, I suffer from cold handy-pandys all year round, but I still have two pairs of protective gloves; one for cold weather and one for über-cold weather. Like, April.

And first aid… do we take a wee green box with us, or is that over-egging the pudding somewhat? In my car (Shock! Horror!), I carry a day-glo yellow reflective jacket, a torch, a first aid kit, a bottle of water, 3 or 4 carrier bags and a travel blanket, everywhere I go. That may seem like overkill, but I've used each item at least once and several of them several times, so there they stay, in the boot of my car.

But on my bikes, I'm often hard pushed in making the effort to remember a bike-lock, let alone anything else. Padlocks and chains, or bikelocks, are another thing. I can't see the Travel Inns letting us park inside the foyer…but carrying locks will certainly add to the weight of what's already on the bikes. Despite 'erself and I weighing in at sylphlike scale readings (as you know), it's quite probable the fuel economy of the bikes will be affected by all these extra bits and pieces.

Which means that, over a distance of 2222 miles (give or take a few deviations), there'll probably be at least an extra stop en-route, to fill 'em up… which means we'd better have an idea of where all the petrol stations in the rural regions of Scotland are… which means I'd probably better have another look at that Root...

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The RealClassic Royal Enfield Round Britain Ride leaves from Watsonian Squire on Tuesday May 10th at 9am sharp (we hope) and will return to that same place ten days later, on Saturday May 21st. Between those two dates the RealClassic Riders will have covered over 2200 miles, visited all 40-plus Enfield dealers on the UK mainland, drunk lots of coffee and eaten Far Too Many doughnuts.

Wanna come along? The itinerary will appear on this site in a week or so...

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Thanks to Graham Ham for having steady enough hands to take some splendid snaps, and for the Patient Owners of the Enfields, for not being at all nonplussed by strange women in strange car parks with strange demands!

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So. Got any suggestions for Vital Equipment?