17 November 2013 (Sunday) - Reculver and Broadstairs

Again I woke up feeling grim, but I was determined not to waste the day feeling sorry for myself. I was not alone in this. Five of us and two dogs set off on a mission.

First of all we made our way to Reculver where we did our geography homework. Earthcaches can be somewhat akin to homework, but I was in an interesting place learning about RipRaps; not every church has one. And from the RipRap we walked along the North Kent coast for a mile or so and came back through the countryside. it was rather beautiful countryside; not that muddy really. Those of our number that like looking for sandwich boxes found ten; those that like playing chicken with the waves got soaked to the fur.
There was a minor incident when one of our dogs (Not "Furry Face TM" thank heavens) startled a passing cyclist. To be fair to the dog she was a sensible and safe distance from the path, but for no reason I could fathom the cyclist looked at the dog, skidded and then went straight over his handlebars face first into the tarmac. I didn't actually laugh out loud (Earle did though).

We hurried back to the car and moved on to Margate. Last night I'd spent three hours on a puzzle cache. GPS + HUNT = CACHE. After three hours I solved this only to be faced with ANSWER = ABCDE. The solution was actually obvious. When you know the solution it is always obvious..
I came up with said solution after an hour's head-scratching over this morning's brekkie, and so wanted to pick up this cache.
If the puzzle was tricky, actually locating the cache itself was difficult. But we got it, and then moved on to Botany Bay. Another Earthcache, and then we had something of a challenge.
We'd seen that there was a terrain5/difficulty4 (nigh-on impossiible) cache nearby. It was apparently fourteen metres from us when we sat at the top of the cliffs and ate our picnic. I made the witty comment that it was probably in a tunnel in the cliff below us.

How prophetic was I? I think it actually was in a tunnel in the cliff below us. I say "think"; we didn't find it.
We went down to the beach where we did find a tunnel beneath where we had eaten lunch. We read the clue, and scrambled to where we thought the thing might be found. The chap who had hidden it said that if it goes missing again he will eat his hat. Whilst I wouldn't suggest he starts sprinkling salt and vinegar on his trilby just yet...
We will be back - with more tunnel rats.

The birds were noisy in Broadstairs. They looked odd; yet familiar. I got the binoculars out. There was a flock of wild parakeets. I've never seen that before. But by now time was pushing on, so we made our way back to the car and came home. Via a graveyard. Did you know that the chap who wrote the song "Silver Machine" by Hawkwind was buried in Thanet? He died a long time ago. If anyone had asked me I would have thought he was still alive; he died round about when the fruits of my loin were being born.
And with the grave found we came home. Small dogs had sand and seagull poo washed off of them, and as er indoors TM" set off out with her mates I settled in front of the telly to watch the antics of Bertie Wooster. I do love an evening of Jeeves and Wooster...

As is so often the case I took one or two photograaphs of our day


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