Ross Noble's Twitter tour of Britain

On his latest tour, the comedian put himself in the hands of his Twitter followers, who led him to tiny pubs, top pies, and an encounter with a very famous dogAs a stand-up comic I have spent much of the past 20 years travelling ? often the same bit of motorway, which for many leads to chucking in touring. Television work ? on the doorstep, often a short chauffeured drive from home ? becomes more appealing. But for me it's led to a passion for motorbikes.It all started when I moved to London and bought a 50cc pizza delivery bike. Ordinary trips were transformed from dull traffic-jammed routes to mini-adventures. Over the years I have tried to tour as much as possible on two wheels. The bikes have got bigger and the journeys longer. On one Australian tour a couple of years ago, I clocked up 26,000km going between 80 live tour dates.So was born the idea for a UK stand-up-on-a-sit-down tour. To give the trip a twist, I decided that instead of using maps and guidebooks, I would ask my Twitter followers (over 130,000 of them at the start of the trip) to suggest places to stop along the way.Fuelled up and ready to go I formed a vague plan with my mates Garrett and Billy ? to head east from Leicestershire, then south, travelling clockwise round Britain, ending back at the start a week later.As we set off I am beginning to think I might bond with the bike. As weird as it might sound, a motorbike can become an extension of you ? not in a feminist trousery way, but in a way I have never experienced with cars, where you sit passively in a metal box. With a bike if you lean, it leans; where you look, the bike goes; the more you relax, the better the bike performs.We set off towards the Twitter-recommended Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe in Melton Mowbray, armed with a postcode and pig fat dreams. It is market day in Melton and I don't think I have ever seen so many old people pottering around one tightly packed area. It looks like a Saga reenactment of Nuremburg. We squeeze down the high street past a row of mobility scooters (a great photo opportunity, with us in full bike kit).A market trader shouts, "Hey Ross, what's with the bike outfit?" Where do you even start? I inform him that I get dizzy in markets and need helmet and protective clothing in case I fall.Past figurines of a meerkat holding a lamp! Where does a meerkat get a lamp? I get a mental image of packs of meerkats ripping a garden gnome apart and taking his stuff. I'm expecting to see another meerkat figurine holding a broken fishing rod and a bloody pointed hat. At Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe, I am given a demonstration in pie making from a genuine pie man. As I leave, loaded with pies, I thank the Lord I am not called Simon.Next the tweets recommend Britain's smallest pub, The Nutshell (thenutshellpub.co.uk) in Bury St Edmunds, where we're soon in a pub-come-cupboard under the stairs, with the one other regular, finishing our drinks quickly before someone wants to put their Hoover and brushes back.It seems the tweeters now think we are on a pub-crawl. We head down to meet sports commentator Steve Parrish and his girlfriend Michelle at their pub, The Queen Adelaide (queen-adelaide.co.uk) near Royston. A former bike racer and teammate of Barry Sheene turned Truck racer turned commentator, Parrish is everything you could want from a racing legend. Clearly a hooligan at heart, he is well-known for his practical jokes and regales us with stories of blowing up toilet blocks, doing stunts with hire cars, racing buses and planting explosive bags of flour in his mate's car.Heading south we stop at the Thruxton Motorsport Centre (thruxtonracing.co.uk), which offers racing car driving experiences, and where I'm to ride a race-prepared Triumph Thruxton. One of the corners on the circuit is called Nobles! Noble rides around Nobles on a Thruxton at Thruxton. Sadly due to lashing rain, the whole experience is at low speed in zero visibility. Can't win 'em all.We're on our way to Wales when a tweet comes in from a bloke working in a pet shop in Bridgend. As it's sort of on our way, we pop in unannounced. I often take my toddler to these stores telling her it's a mini zoo ? makes a cheap and effective day out for all.Cracking on to Welshpool we stop at the garage of a mate of mine who swaps the road tyres on one of the bikes for knobbly off-road tyres and I spend a couple of hours playing around on the side of a Welsh mountain before heading for Chester.The tweets are pointing us to what turns out to be the high point of the trip ? a candle shop. But this is no ordinary candle shop; this is Candles Plus (Lady Heyes Craft Centre near Frodsham, carolgeescandles.com) in Cheshire, run by none other than Bob Carolgees of Spit the Dog and Tiswas fame. Some retired performers wouldn't take kindly to some young comic turning up on their doorstep unannounced, but Bob is lovely. Showing us around the shop, he says the words which make my week, "Shall I get the lad?"He shoots off home and five minutes later returns with Spit the Dog. For some, travel is about museums, views, and mountain-top temples. For me, it doesn't get better than standing about in a candle shop chatting to Bob Carolgees and Spit the Dog. We could stay all day, but we have a long ride ahead, to Edinburgh.Here quite a few Twitter tips are telling us about a bizarre wild west town in a back alley in Morningside. At first we think it is a wind-up, but then, through an archway, we see a mini Wild West town complete with Saloon and Jail, all housing small businesses. It was built in the 1990s as a sales area for a company that specialised in south-western style furniture.From here we ride to Alnwick, in Northumberland, to visit the castle (alnwickcastle.com), and finally back south. We clock up over 2,000 miles and I've loved every minute of it.? Ross Noble will auction the bike he used for his tour, a 1050cc Triumph Speed Triple, at the Goodwood Festival of Speed (goodwood.co.uk, 30 June-3 July, �116 for weekend adult admission, or from �10-53 per day) on 1 July, to raise money for Riders for Health (riders.org), a charity that provides motorbike transport for medics to reach otherwise inaccessible parts of rural Africa. Follow Ross at twitter.com/realrossnoble Road tripsUnited KingdomMotorcyclingComedyEdinburghguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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