13 August 2014 (Wednesday) - Haroldslea

I watched "Family Guy" over brekkie, and then spent a little while watching another on-line geo-squabble. Some chap whose command of the English language leaves a little to be desired was ranting about the cost of a premium membership of geocaching dot com. At fifty pence per week I think its good value, but he was whinging about the cost being too much. I got the distinct impression that he was looking for some sort of a subsidy on the money he spends making geocaches. (I might be mistaken here; his written English isn't good) Whilst I sympathise with his sentiments, the nice people at geocaching dot com are doing it as a business; and if we don't like it, that's our tough luck. It's called "capitalism".

And talking of geocaching I loaded "Furry Face TM" into the car, drove round to collect Lisa, and after a minor diversion to the electric fags shop we were soon on the motorway. With a day's holiday I'd looked on the map and found a little loop of thirteen geocaches along three miles of lanes near Crawley. Using judicious map reading and idiot enthusiasm we were able to expand this walk to about five miles to incorporate some high terrain caches; one up a tree, one underground in a tunnel. And even that holy grail of geo-finds; a D5/T5 (didn't actually find that one!)
Our underground excursion was interesting; the tunnel was not built with the more rotund frame in mind, and half way along that tunnel was the skeleton of what I think could only have been a triceratops.
Going up the tree was fun; from the ground I could see what I was sure was the cache. it was only on climbing that I found the actual cache was a lot lower than I was expecting; what I could see was a huge pine cone. It was when I was two thirds of the way up that tree (about twenty metres) that my knee became *really* painful. There are those who say I'm too old to be free-climing trees. They may have a point.

We had a really good walk; I even took some photos of our exploits. Mind you I must admit today's exertions tired me more than I was expecting. Two weekends with no major hikes have certainly left me out of practice. However, once home I knew that I wasn't finished yet.
I took my car round to the garage (to have the air-con sorted) and walked "Furry Face TM" home from there.

Once home I scoofed some chocolate coated peanuts. "er indoors TM" had bought them for me as a pressie. They were nice; they lasted me for about ten minutes. They conatined over a thousand calories. In fact about the same amont of calories that I'd burned off during today's walks.

And with my dog fast asleep and snoring I set off to the astro club committee meeting. Tonight was a meeting of the new observatory steering group. It probably didn't help that my knee was still playing up from when I strained it earlier, but tonight I had no enthusiasm for the new observatory project. All I wanted to do was put my knee up and sulk. Perhaps I should mention it at tomorrow's hospital appointment?

And in closing today ..... I've retrospectively censored this...... in years to come I might say why

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