After
a rather bad night’s sleep I had my weigh in. After my weight holding constant
for some time, this morning I was down three pounds. I was pleased about that.
I
gave Fudge breakfast in bed, then over my brekkie I had a quick look at the
Internet. Yesterday I whinged about the coming data protection regulations;
this morning my dentist had emailed me asking for formal permission to carry on
emailing me. What nonsense - *of course*
I want emails from my dentist.
Even
though it was only half past five, me and Fudge set sail for Junction four of
the M20 where we’d arranged to meet our lift. The plan for today was to go for
a *lot* of geocaches. I’ve done a
hundred (or more) six times before;
on each of the three days of our Cornwall trip a couple of years ago, on our
walk along the Chelmer and Blackwater navigation series in Essex in May 2013,
round Crockenhill near Swanley in May 2014 and on a duck hunt in August 2017.
Knowing
that going for big numbers takes a lot of time we set off early. Knowing that
where we were going was rather hilly, "er indoors TM" had decided to
stay home and crack on with the decorating.
We
soon met Karl and Tracey; Charlotte was pleased to have Fudge in the back of
the car with her. Pausing only briefly for McBrekkie we were soon high on a
hill in the back of beyond. We put on boots and off we went.
We
had a rather good walk. Two weeks ago the day was *so* hot; last week it was *so*
wet. Today was ideal walking weather. As we walked we saw buzzards and slow worms.
We even saw a deer that I logged using my “mammals”
app. We also saw rabbits and squirrels who were too fast for us to photograph,
and horses and donkeys who weren’t. (You
can see the photos here) At the eighteen-mile stage, just as I thought
Fudge was flagging he saw a pheasant and suddenly developed a whole new lease
of life.
As
we went I managed to cut my hand quite impressively (no idea how), we found no end of discarded farm machinery, and we
even rolled in stuff (as dogs do).
We
walked on high hills and low valleys; as we went we met quite a few cyclists.
The day was only marred by the frankly awful music emerging from a farmhouse in
one of the low valleys as we walked past high above. Why do people have to play
such terrible noise so loudly? But we soon left that way behind.
At
the fifteen-mile stage we found a pub. Usually when I am driving I will not
drink at all. But with a few more hours walking ahead of us I thought I would make
an exception to my rule; after all there was plenty of opportunity to walk it
off. A pint (or two) was very welcome
after fifteen miles; however having to get up and walk on took some doing.
Ironically
from the pub to the car was all ever so slightly up hill.
Geocache-wise
today was (for me) somewhat
problematical. The caches were all relatively straightforward hides. If we hadn’t
found them in five minutes then they weren’t there. We logged “didn’t find” on four. Two had (obviously) gone when a new fence had
been installed over the last week or so; one was in seriously deep nettles, and
one seemed to have dropped from its hidey-hole. I’ve found more caches in a day
before (on four other occasions) but
at a shade under twenty-two miles, today was the longest caching walk I’ve ever
done. It was a shame that “Hannah” (my GPS unit) only had two thirds of the caches
registered. Thank heavens for the ability to hunt Tupperware on a mobile phone.
We’d
started walking at quarter past eight in the morning; we got back to the car
half an hour after sunset at half past nine in the evening having walked over
twenty-one miles and having found one hundred and ten geocaches. Having left
home just after half past five this morning, Fudge and I struggled home at just
after half past eleven.
We’d
had a rather full day…
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