17 December 2012 (Monday) - Grain Sea Fort

Bikes boil my piss. Well, to be fair it's not the bikes so much as the people riding them. Take yesterday for example. I had an interesting altercation with a plank on a mountain bike. I was bringing up the rear of the group with whom I was out walking. I watched the party ahead of me scatter in all directions as an idiot flew downhill through them on his mountain bike. By the time he'd reached me he'd slowed down somewhat. He then launched a bitter tirade about how rude everyone else had been by not saying hello to him. When I intimated that perhaps they didn't like his flying down footpaths on his bike (like a bat out of hell) he got quite mouthy, claiming that he had a God-given right to do just that. Silly fellow.
And then this morning I nearly mowed down two cyclists whilst driving to work. Both were out on their bikes on main roads before 7a.m. Sunrise this morning was at 07.56 - it was really dark when I nearly killed them. Both of my potential victims were clothed entirely in black, neither of them had any lights or reflectors on their bikes at all. And one of them was cycling down the wrong side of the road.

And so to work, which was rather uncomfortable. The elastic had gone in my underpants, and I spent much of the day hoiking my undercarriage about; doing the job my pants didn't. It's the sort of thing which is rather entertaining all the time it is happening to someone else. But when it's your own junk, it's a bit of a nuisance.

And then home earlier than usual. I got changed, and was soon zooming up the motorway with Lisa and Earle. A call had gone up on the Kent geocaching page that people were going to try for the cache in the sea fort which is about half a mile off of the coast of the Isle of Grain and is only accessible at low tide. Low tide as at about 9pm, so a dozen hardy (daft) souls met up and marched along the causeway. The first few hundred yards were the muddiest, but people who had been there before had already gone out to the fort and left a trail of beacons for us to follow, and set up a ladder. And also arranged for hot drinks to be waiting for us all. Another of our number brought muffins, and having explored the fort we had an impromptu sixty-fourth birthday party for one of our number. I was impressed - the birthday boy had received a kidney transplant less than a month previously.
Being a tunnel rat at heart it was odd - reminiscent of the architecture of the tunnels at Capel and Dover, but not underground. And having a geocache there was a nice added bonus. It would have been good to have explored more but time and tide (literally) were pressing. So we made our way back along a causeway which I felt was noticeably wetter than when we'd gone out.

Back on the mainland we looked for (and found) three more caches that were in the area. They took some finding - the local geology apparently had a lot of ferrite which stuffs up GSP readings.
And so home shortly after midnight to find the Chinese take-away that he most recent fruit of my loin had left. That made for a nice bit of supper.

We shall have to go back and explore that fort in the daylight...

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