15 September 2018 (Saturday) - Hurst Green and Battle


I actually did have an early night last night, and apart from a trip to Trap One at four o’clock I slept like a log for ten hours until my phone’s alarm woke me playing the “Tiswas” theme tune.

Over brekkie I had a look-see at Facebook. It reminded me that a year ago I was on holiday in Greece. Today it seemed everyone else was on holiday with pictures coming from Budapest, Cornwall and all sorts of places. Mind you having taken the dogs out for a rather cold seven o’clock tiddle I wasn’t envious of those who were on camping trips today. In the past I used go camping several times a year; nowadays I can’t help but feel “been there, done that”. There is camping and there is roughing it in a tent. Camping takes too much hard work in setting up, and I’m too old to rough it in a tent.
On checking my emails I saw that my professional body had emailed me asking me to complete a survey saying what I thought of them. I suppose most professional bodies are the same; run by the people at the top of the profession the focus will be on those matters which are relevant to them. I didn’t actually say “screw you and screw the horse you rode in on” but having spent twenty minutes detailing their failures in graphic detail, perhaps I might as well have done so.
I then realized that today was the county geo-meet. I must have missed that; I do need to sort out my diary.

Forgetting to pack the extending leads we put the usual leads onto the hounds and set off to Hurst Green where we met Karl, Tracey and Charlotte. We had a rather good wander round the fields and woods before eventually ending up back where we started. Ending up back where we started is to be encouraged as that was where we’d left the cars.
We then drove down to the Royal Oak in Whatlington for a pint (or two) of lunch. The Royal Oak in Whatlington is somewhere that I’ve driven past many times but have never called in to visit before. It was a rather good place to visit; friendly staff, rather good dog treats, a very good garden. It was clearly more a restaurant than it was pub, but we had a crafty couple of pints in the garden before moving on to Battle Great Woods for another walk.
Regular readers of this drivel may recall I’ve walked the paths round Battle Great Woods before. It was on Sunday 4 January 2015 when that day’s blog entry was entitled “Seven Miles of Mud”. Whilst today was nowhere near as muddy, it was muddy enough. There was also a wheelbarrow twenty yards up a tree too, but we didn’t dwell on it. It wasn’t bothering us, so we didn’t bother it either.
Again we had a rather good stomp about, and again after a rather good stomp about we went back to the Royal Oak in Whatlington for a couple of pints and a dog treat all round. Treacle seemed more interested in burying her treat rather than eating it, but each to their own…
I took a few photos as we walked and drank. I do that…

Geocaching-wise today was very much a walk of two halves. The first set of caches in Hurst Green were tricky to find. With difficulties rated between two and three out of five, I couldn’t help but feel that they should have been rated between three and four. Mind you I think we all felt rather smug that we found all of those ones.
The second set of caches in Battle Great were far easier to find, but each of these has some Cluedo cards in them. As we walked round we found ourselves playing a game of Cluedo. Having solved who did the murdering, where, and with what we then had to solve a little puzzle to find the final geocache. I was rather disappointed to find that it *wasn’t* Corporal Clott in the lavatory with the loofah, but I wasn’t that far off. Mind you having solved the puzzle we then got a little confused when it became apparent that we’d solved it wrongly, but on phoning a friend it turned out that the mistake we’d made was thinking we’d made a mistake.

We were rather late home, so we thought we’d get take-away for dinner. In a triumph of idiot enthusiasm over common sense I persuaded "er indoors TM" that she might like chicken kebab.
She did…

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