22 December 2016 (Thursday) - Leigh



I had a rather troubled night with dreams plagued by nudey ladies without any clothes on. In my rather vivid nightmare one of the ladies of the local geocaching scene was wandering across hill and dale in the altogether because she was keen to show that I wasn’t the only one who had “puppies”. Said lady would *not* cover up (despite my puritanical protestations), and some of the other geocachers were getting rather over excited. The dream was so realistic that when I woke (cuddling my dog) I lay for a few minutes trying to work out where I was and what was going on.
It was at this point that I heard the puppy whinging downstairs so I gave "er indoors TM" a prod and told he that her dog wanted her. She was grateful for that (!)

Social media was interesting today. A chap with whom I’ve worked over the years recently moved to the West Country. He mentioned me in a post and someone of whom I’ve never heard started singing my praises about the work-related on-line resources I created. It was good to be appreciated; I’m glad people are finding them useful.
I also read an article about why there are so few people in my line of work. The author wittered on with the standard management-speak but never actually tackled the core problem that on the one hand you can study for years, or on the other hand you can drive a train (with one GCSE) for double the wages.

Once "er indoors TM" was ready I put the lead onto "Furry Face TM", settled the puppy and set off. The baby is just too boisterous for me to take both dogs for a major hike. The original plan for the day had "Daddy’s Little Angel TM" along with us today to assist, but events conspired against that idea. So we left "Furry Shark TM" at home and "Daddy’s Little Angel TM" came round to entertain her.
We collected Jamie, dropped "er indoors TM" at work, and set off to Leigh. We soon met Aleta, and went for a rather good walk. And (would you believe it – there were some geocaches along the way)
Bearing in mind how it rained yesterday the weather was beautiful today. I took a few photos whilst we walked; they don’t do the views justice. As we walked we felt the temperature drop as we walked uphill; we actually walked through the low clouds and were soon looking down on them. We met (lost) normal people who thought we knew where we were going – they were disappointed when we didn’t. We met a pheasant-shooting party. We all slipped in the mud a little.

After a couple of hours we had looped back to the village where we had a pint and a bowl of chips. From here we walked up to the church. There was a cache there. In order to find it you needed to pick up various clues from ten other caches. Over the years I’d got some of the clues; a little thought and guesswork gave some possibilities; the second guess proved successful. I’m not entirely sure that guesstimating the location is entirely within the rules but reading previous logs shows that others have completely ninja-ed the cache so here’s hoping.
We then walked on into some rather beautiful woods where there was a small geo-series. Billed as a sixty-minute stroll that was exactly what it was. I wish I had a wood like that nearby that took me an hour to walk round it.
We got back to the car where “Hannah” told us we’d wandered a tad over nine miles. I think that might have been an over-estimate. That GPS unit played up a little today. I might just have to upgrade the firmware.

Geocache-wise it was a rather odd route. Normally we follow a specific route that someone has put out for us. Today we rather cobbled together our own route. We started off following the L-T-P series but there seemed to be a *huge* gap on that series between cache 5 and cache 7, and no #6 that we could see, so we cut the circuit short and made our way back to the cars following a couple of caches from another series in reverse order. However doing them in reverse order meant that we weren’t ideally placed to pick up the field-puzzle cache. In fact having solved the puzzle and seeing we’d have to seriously back-track we missed one out. But having got back to the village the sixty minute stroll filled the afternoon well.
We had a good walk; we made seventeen finds. There was probably room along the route for forty or more caches, but sometimes it isn’t about hunting the Tupperware.

Once home I hosed the mud from my dog and fussed my puppy. True to her word "Daddy’s Little Angel TM" had been round and had run the puppy ragged. With both dogs fed I then fed myself. "er indoors TM" was at her works Christmas do, so I got myself a bag of Doritos, a jar of salsa dip and a can of diet coke. Perhaps not the healthiest meal but it suited me. I scoffed it whilst watching the last episode of the National Geographic’s series “Mars”. People who aren’t professional scientists tell me that it is a really good show as it is “scientifically accurate”. Being one myself I remain somewhat sceptical about the show. Bacteria don’t grow roots whilst you watch them in a microscope…

I wonder what else is on my SkyPlus box that needs watching….

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