29 November 2012 (Thursday) - Busy, Busy...

I was laying in bed last night having a last minute check of my emails before going to sleep when I saw something that wound me up just a little bit. Regular readers of this drivel might recall a rant I made a week or so about locations of geocaches. The guidelines say that they shouldn't be near schools or youth clubs. Last week I found what I thought would be the ideal place to hide a cache, but I then realised that it was right on top of a children's farm. So I immediately rejected the place as a potential hide. At 11.30pm last night I read that a cache had been hidden in that very spot. I considered ranting on the geocaching forums, but decided not to bother. Instead I thought I'd take Fudge to find it in the morning.

But I couldn't sleep. I went onto the Kent Caching page where a fellow cacher was egging me on to go to find it. After an hour I realised that "er indoors TM" was still up and about, and was talking on-line to another cacher. And Fudge wanted a walk anyway. So three of us (and Fudge who doesn't like geocaching) set off to find this cache. My GPS took us almost exactly to the spot where I had been planning to hide the cache. And within five minutes I was feeling rather smug having found the cache. In true "Team ELF" style I carried on searching before standing back and being smug. Within another minute we were all feeling smug, Even more so when we opened the cache and saw we were the first ones there. At 1.08am. I'm not normally a fan of night-caching...
Mind you I am still rather miffed about this cache. It is on the footpath by a farm project aimed at children. In fact it is not two yards from the farmland. The cache I had turned down was ten times further away (and on the other side of a very busy road) from anywhere aimed at kiddies.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that I slept well. After a spot of brekkie I took furry face for a walk round Bowens Field, through the park and home. He seemed to like it. On the way home we met the first fruit of my loin who was on his way home too. He seemed well, for all that he was moaning about having a cold. A quick cuppa. and the Folkstonians arrived. One of them did her own thing whilst me and the Rear Admiral set off on a mission.

Being the end of November we thought there might be bargains to be had in Camping International. So we set off there. As it was quite a while since I’d been there, we used Sat-Nav. Woops. Now perhaps I made a boo-boo, but if you put “Camping International” into Google Maps the place comes up with the correct address and post code. However when you then use that same map to navigate to the shop, it takes you to somewhere just over ten miles closer to London. Bexleyheath to be precise. (Go on – try it out!) Oh, how we laughed.

By the time we eventually found Gillingham it was gone mid-day, so we popped into Gina’s cafĂ© for a spot of lunch. Very tasty. And then on to Camping International. There were one or two tents that looked quite good; but still more expensive than on eBay. So we came home. And in another triumph of Sat-Nav we almost (but not quite) came home via Sheerness.

Once home we found the most recent fruit of my loins, and after a quick cuppa took the dogs for a walk, reprising the route we did this morning, but in reverse. Whilst out I managed to rip a hole in my fleece. I wasn’t happy about that; but I think I’ve managed to stitch a repair which will do to be getting on with.

And then we spent the evening scoffing curry and watching episodes of Star Trek. Good times...

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