I slept well again, despite
a very rumbly stomach. I wonder what I’ve eaten to have set it making such
noises?
As I looked at Facebook
over brekkie I sent out a few birthday wishes, then after fighting with the
printer (it
doesn’t work!) I made
some provisional plans for my next Wherigo project. Following on from the
feedback from my two recent Wherigos (which have been entirely positive) I’ve got a plan to do “The Crystal Maze” in the co-op field. I can divide the field
into the four zones. In each zone there will be four games. The player will be
randomly given a game to play in each zone. If they win they get time toward
the final task. And depending on how well they do in the final task they will
be given the co-ordinates of one of three geocaches (gold, silver or bronze). If people want to find all three caches
then they have to go through the maze again. Being randomly presented with four
games out of sixteen should give a different game each time, and only taking
fifteen minutes (maximum) to go through the maze should mean that
people could do the lot in less than an hour.
It will mean a lot of
programming, but what else would I do with my time?
We got ourselves organized
and into the car. First of all we went to the post office in Singleton. I had a
letter to send by recorded delivery. The woman behind the counter (rather aggressively) told me that “recorded delivery” and “signed for” are the same thing these days. As I was paying, the woman at the till
next to me asked her customer if he would like “recorded delivery” or “signed for”.
I left the two women behind
the counter having a rather heated argument.
We drove out to
Bekesbourne. We listened to Ashford radio for as long as we could, if only to
listen to the woman presenter. She..um… was a ….yeah… little… um… hesitant….yeah… and….yeah …. struggled … um …. to string… yeah…
more…than…two…yeah….words…um…together.
We got to Bekesbourne where
we went on a little walk which was marked out (as always) by geocaches. Today’s route was one we’d walked before five and a
half years ago (on
26 January 2014). In
the meantime many of the caches had been replaced, and so with about two thirds
of the route being new caches we thought we might have a little walk.
We bimbled about. The route
was mainly off-road and so ideal for the dogs. One of the paths we followed
went right through the middle of Howlett’s zoo and it was rather fun to see the
elephants. It was a shame that Treacle had to try to pick a fight with a wild
pig (of
some sort); it is amazing how brave
she can be when there is a sturdy fence between her and that with which she is
arguing.
We had a minor episode when
one of the normal people latched on to us. I’m all for allowing dogs to
socialize with other dogs, but within limits. If you *really* want a full-time playmate for your dog, get
yourself another dog.
Geocache-wise it was a good
walk. Caches were sensibly placed, and the hides weren’t overly difficult. One
had us struggling for half an hour, but we’d got the wrong idea from the hint
that had been given.
With walk done we drove up
to a rather amazing place. There used to be a geocache there which I found in
2014 when I wrote “... It was actually rather scary. In a corner of a field there were
about a hundred concrete pyramids; each about a metre tall. The pyramids were
very old and whatever their original use was would seem to have disappeared
into the mists of time. Many of these pyramids were now under stinging nettles
and brambles. But many were still visible, and they all looked incredibly out
of place. It was eerie - almost like something out of an episode of
"Doctor Who".”
I’ve since found that those
concrete pyramids are tank traps from the last war. The original geocache there
had been archived, so we popped in to have a look and to find the replacement.
There was an issue with
this cache. There wasn’t one cache there. There were three. The original from
2005 (which
had been archived but was still there and was fine). The “new” one from 2015 (which was broken), and one which someone threw down recently.
We tided things up. We took the dry paper log from the broken cache and put it
into the unbroken watertight one, cleared away the rubbish and told the cache
owner what we’d done. That took us about a minute. It certainly took me longer
to type it than to do it. According to the rules we should have told the C.O.
to sort it out, but why have him waste half a day when we had it done in
seconds?
Similarly we’d seen one of
the caches on the series we’d walked as being missing and before we left home
we’d arranged to replace it as we’d be walking by anyway.
It never fails to amaze me
that we are in the minority when it comes to fixing geo-problems. Most people
just post a “sort
it out dogbreath” log
and walk away. Much like one chap had done yesterday (on both of these caches).
We came home; I posted some
photos of our walk up on to Facebook. For some inexplicable
reason Facebook tagged several of the photos as having been taken in Ramsgate.
"er
indoors TM"
boiled up a rather good bit of dinner then went off to the Saturday film night
where they were showing “Dumbo”. I stayed home with the dogs, and as
they slept I watched “The Lego Batman Movie”. I’d not seen it before. It
was rather good…
