So I've just spent an hour or so chopping up bits of dead cow to make jerky for Rob's trip. Yep,  vegetarian-for-more-than-a- quarter-of-a-century me ... it's not helped by the fact that it dries better in really small pieces and I was being extra careful to cut any fat out. Since fat doesn't dry properly, if there's too much of it in the finished jerky it can send it rancid. Normally I don't worry too much about tiny bits, as we store the stuff in the freezer anyway just to be on the safe side, but this batch will be travelling on the trike with Rob, so I wanted to make extra sure that it wasn't going to poison him. (He had salmonella once. It wasn't pretty.)

Still, the cats were happy with the scraps...

Also humming away in the dehydrator is the contents of a tin of mango pulp which I bought at Asda this morning and seems to be the ideal consistency for making fruit leathers. Later I'll stew some cooking apples for more apple leather and I need to call the campsite at Mablethorpe (the start point for the journey) as we'll be driving out there  next Wednesday evening and camping there overnight, ready for an early start on Thursday morning.

All of which is to say that the trike was despatched from Australia yesterday and with any luck will be delivered here on Friday. Rob will still have to get the electrics sorted, but he's hoping to be able to get a practice ride out to his parents' place this weekend. We're very grateful to Mick at Greenspeed, who, once it became clear that there was no way that Rob's own trike would be ready in time, offered to send out the demo machine so that Rob could go ahead with the tour.