Yet another restless
night. I'm getting so fed up with this. Especially at the weekends
when I find myself sitting watching rubbish on the telly just to
waste the time until "er indoors TM"
gets up. The trouble is that by the time she gets up (at a
sensible sort of time) I am bored senseless and itching to go do
something.
This morning I had been
intending to kill time by starting watching "Game of
Thrones". On my newly-upgraded SkyPlus box I saw I could
download the first three seasons. Or so I thought. When I tried to do
so it told me to upgrade my subscription. I'm not doing that; I pay
quite enough already So I downloaded and watched "Extras"
instead. Starring Ricky Gervais it's quite entertaining. I'll have to
see if I can borrow "Game of Thrones" on DVD.
Also whilst killing time
I had a look-see at my tent poles. Having had one break at last
August's camp I have had them in my living room as a reminder to get
them fixed. Sweatman's mowers let me down yesterday. I wondered if
there was somewhere on my way to work where I might get a
replacement pole. But having had a look-see I can't help but think
that a good dose of duct tape will put it all to rights.
And so off to Singleton
to collect Suzy and Gordon Tracy for our peregrination. From
wictionary, a
peregrination is a journey from place to place. Usually on foot.
Parish Peregrination is
billed as a series of (about) thirty geocaches involving a
walk of about fifteen miles through six kentish parishes.There are
some who might say that the distance was somewhat excessive for one
day, but we thought we'd give it a go.
We nearly fell at the
first hurdle; on approaching the designated parking spot (where
formal permission to park has been given to all geocachers) we
found a locked gate. Woops. A two mile detour brought us to the other
side of that gate; and we were off peregrinating.
It was a good walk; only
one stile on the entire route, and very clearly marked footpaths for
all of the way (except in only one spot). We had a "hit
list" of twenty-nine geocaches; we found twenty-eight. We
didn't try for the twenty-ninth. the descripttion said that the
church in which it was based closed at 5pm, and at 5.05pm we were
still several hundred yards up the road from it.
We were walking for nine
hours today, and at the end we had covered just under seventeen
miles. I feel I must mention the religious nuts we met along the way.
In the middle of nowhere a chap with a pronounced American accent
appeared from nowhere and led us back to the footpath from which we
had strayed. As we walked along this path we were harried and
harrassed by several people who I could only describe as looking like
extras from the fiilm "Deliverance". One of the more
loquatious of these people, a rather scary freak wielding a large
axe, told us that they were a self-sufficient community of seventy
families totalling nearly three hundred people, bound together by
their faith in their God.
I'm sure these deightful
people (!) were harmless, but I certainly felt rather
apprehensive around them, and was certainly glad when we got away
from their lands. Mind you it did very little for my state of mind
to find we'd gone from religious-nut-central to Chillenden; scene of
one of the most
horrific murders in living memory.
I took fifty
photos whilst we were out. I do that a lot.
As a geocache series how
could I describe it? It is unlike any cache walks I've done before.
I first heard of this series at a cachers meet about a year ago when
I heard it described as "old-school". I think that's
a fair description. The caches are spaced out far more so than on
many other geo-walks; an average distance of half a mile between caches. The only two other walks I've done of
comprable distance (Gypsum Gyratory and CBN series) have a
hundred (or more) caches and are numbered 1, 2, 3... This walk
isn't like that. Each cache has it's own name and a little local
history, and needs a little thought with the map to work out which
cache is next and where the route goes. Which is a good thing. Some
walks are all about numbers of caches. This one isn't. It's about a
really good walk.
It's a shame more people
haven't done this walk. The individual caches get found, but from
what I could see I don't think anyone has done it in its entirety for
eight months.
Once home "Furry
Face TM" curled up in has basket and
snored. The poor little dog was worn out. My face was glowing; for
all that the day was rather overcast I caught the sun today. And my
back really hurts too. I can understand my legs aching, but why
should my back ache?
I can't be ill tomorrow.
I've finally got an appointment with the experts who are going to
sort out my insomnia. I hope...
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