Finding
myself wide awake at four o’clock I got up and watched an episode of “Orange in the New Black” in which (amazingly) no one flopped anything out,
nor did anyone do gratuitous lesbian sex with, to or at anyone else. Something
of a first for that show.
I
then went back to bed and slept through till nine o’clock. Perhaps I should get
up more often when I can’t sleep?
Over
brekkie I had a look at the Internet. Nothing much had happened overnight, and
there were no emails which had been worth the electricity to send them.
The
plan for today had been to go to Hastings to walk the firehills. But I’d backed
out of that yesterday. Whilst my knees are certainly better than they were,
they still aren’t fully restored to their former glory (!) and so a slightly easier (and
flatter) walk was on the cards today. Bearing in mind what a good dog walk
I’d had last Sunday (doing one “big long”
geocache) I suggested we went out to Victory Wood (near Whitstable) where there was a puzzle geocache which was billed
as taking less than an hour and involving a walk of less than two miles. We
thought that might be something of a recuperative walk for my knackered joints
whilst at the same time giving the hounds a run, so off we went.
The
walk involved finding information at four different points along a walk, then
doing some sums and walking to a final destination. We fell at the first hurdle
when we had to find out how many guns were on HMS Victory. But talking to my
friend Google saved the day. We got the next two bits of information easily
enough, and our final port of call to find answers to questions was at a rather
fine statue in the arse-end of nowhere. It was a very good statue; such a shame
I had to clout my head quite so sharply on it. I smacked my bonce with such
vigour that I felt quite nauseous, and the headache persisted until the late
afternoon.
However
with all questions answered and all information gathered we did the sums and
plotted where the geocache was hidden. It was only half a mile away.
Looking
at the map we saw there was another geocache not too far out
of our way that we might collect on the way to the final part of this puzzle.
Looking back this was our mistake… With no clear route to this extra cache we
made our own way through woodlands; stomping through the undergrowth like
things possessed only to fail to find this extra one. We found some rather odd
gravestones and *lots* of ants, but
no film pots under any rocks.
The ants there were
rather savage; with "er
indoors TM"
being quite seriously bitten by them we gave up and resumed our search for the
final part of the puzzle cache. Having stomped through woods to go out of our
way we stomped back through woods to get back on to our way.
We soon found what we were looking for. We *all* found what we were looking for. "er
indoors TM" and I were looking for a geocache; the dogs
were looking for a rather stagnant stream in which to wallow. The dogs seemed
very pleased with themselves to be chest-deep in the mire, "er indoors TM"
and I were rather chuffed to find something which hadn’t been found in over a
year; another resuscitation.
We took a wrong turn on the way back to the car; not too
much of a wrong turn, but when your joints are iffy any wrong turn is a bad
move. I was glad to get back to the car. I have always said that descriptions
of geo-walks are underestimates. Today’s walk was supposed to be less than two
miles taking an hour. Admittedly we did take a little diversion, but we walked
nearly four miles in over two and a half hours.
Before we left home I’d pondered on a little geo-series not
far from Victory Wood that we might have done if time allowed. Time allowed,
but my joints didn’t. I didn’t so much get into the car as collapsed into it.
We’ll walk round Crockenhill another time.
I
took a few photos as we’d hobbled round.
Victory Wood isn’t a bad place to go visit. Once home I put those photos
on-line whilst "er
indoors TM"
bathed the dogs. Finding I’d regained the ability to move I thought I’d mow the
lawn. I mowed the lawn and then found I’d again lost the ability to move. As I
heaved the lawn mower back into the shed I felt some drops of rain. Rain? I
again checked the weather forecast. There was a one per cent chance of rain
this afternoon. Reality had clearly got it wrong.
As the aching in my
legs subsided I perused the Internet working on my latest project. Yesterday I
took on the “Ashford Amble” series of
geocaches. They have been live for over six years and I think it is fair to say
that anyone who wants to do them has had chance to do them. They run relatively
close to my “Worten Wander” series of
caches which I put out in February and (in
all honesty) I’m not happy with. Much of that series runs along a busy road
and one of the caches keeps going missing. I’ve a plan to incorporate the two
series into one bigger walk much of which will be relatively easy puzzles and
projections and four of the easiest Wherigos known to science.
I have a route in mind.
I have puzzles in mind. I’ve written as much of the Wherigo programming as I
can. I have a start point in mind. I’m off work for a fortnight in a couple of
weeks’ time; I shall walk the route then to check it out, and at that point I
can finalise all the details. If nothing else it will keep me out of mischief
for a day or so.
"er indoors TM" boiled up a
rather good bit of dinner, and she went bowling as she does on a Sunday. I
settled myself in front of the telly, made my poggered knees as comfortable as
I could and watched last week’s episode of “Gotham”.
I shall watch more
telly in a bit I expect… It don’t watch itself…
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