It was with something of a sense of relief that I found the kitchen floor wasn’t awash with pug turds when I came downstairs this morning. Fudge was itching to get into the garden, Sid wasn’t keen, but he got turfed out anyway. Fudge did what dogs are supposed to do in the garden first thing in the morning. Sid stood by the back door looking grumpy, then sulked because I wouldn’t let him into anywhere with carpet.
I made toast, and had a look at the Internet. Those who have only put out one Munzee all year were finding fault with the two hundred that I have put out. In life some give and some take, and those that take want to take more and more. It gets a little wearing sometimes.
There was a minor squabble on one of the Lego-related Facebook pages about the cost of posting Lego. Those buying felt they were already paying over the odds. Those selling felt that postage was just another thing on which they could make a legitimate profit. You wouldn’t believe how much people can quarrel over Lego.
I spent a few minutes looking at an Earthcache in Canterbury. This weekend is “Earthcache Weekend” – if you log a find on one you get a souvenir. Back in the day I’ve organised outings and get-togethers of the Kent Geocaching community in honour of Earthcache Day. But now…So far not one of my three Earthcaches has had a find logged this weekend. Is it just because everyone has already done all that are close(ish) to home, or because people can’t people be bothered with Earthcaches? Other icon types don’t get their own “day” and souvenir….For me it probably doesn’t help that there is only one Earthcache within an hour of home that I haven’t done and that is in the middle of Canterbury. I looked at the requirements of the thing. It would be easy enough to blag from home, but I decided against doing that.
I posted on the local geocaching Facebook page asking opinions about “Earthcache Weekend” – a lot of people replied; it seemed there was pretty much zero interest in hunting earthcaches .
We got most of the dogs onto their leads, settled Sid, and drove out to Bossingham; Munzing as we went. We were soon parked up in the village hall car park where we met Karl Tracey and Charlotte, and we were all soon off on a little walk. A series of nearly eighty geocaches had gone live in the area recently. They had been put out in two overlapping loops; one following lanes and one following footpaths. We went rogue and did one half of each loop so we had a walk which was half lane and half footpath, and we will have something similar for next time too.
We started off walking half of the loop on lanes, but in reverse order (seriously rogue!) I must admit I was a tad worried that having the dogs on the lanes might have been problematical, but the lanes were mostly quiet. There was one minor episode when we met a car, two horses and a flock of cyclists all at once, but other than that the lane walking was fine.
The section across fields was also good. It was a shame that some of our party had to eat sheep poo as we walked, but some of our party do that anyway. As we came across the fields we saw some metal detectorists. I was hoping that the beep of my GPS might have made them sit up and take notice, but none of them heard it (which was a shame). There were some rather stupendous holes. Rabbits? More like subterranean dinosaurs; I wonder what it was that had dug those.
Geocache-wise we had a very good walk. I suspect that this was in no small part due to the fact that in order to know where to look for each of the caches you had to first solve a puzzle at home. Putting in this extra step discourages a lot of people (specifically the sort that re-hide the thing where they think would be a better hide once they’ve taken it home to show their mum), and so the things you are looking for are treated with a little more consideration. We felt that the co-ords were maybe a tad out on one or two of the hides, but they couldn’t have been very far off since we found all of our targets within a few minutes each time thanks to rather helpful hints.
The puzzles to solve had been jigsaws of pictures of local hunters of Tupperware. Each of the dogs had been the subject of a jigsaw puzzle; you can see them here, here and here. It was a shame that Fudge almost (but not quite) tiddled on his one.
As luck would have it, the cache named for Karl, Tracey and Charlotte was their twelve thousandth find. (The ones named for "er indoors TM" and me are on the next loop)
I took a few photos as we walked; we got back to the car and met friends who were just off on their walk. What with lock-down we hadn’t seen them for ages; it was good to have a socially-distanced catch-up before all saying our goodbyes and heading home where I alternated between geo-puzzling and dozing until "er indoors TM" served up a rather good bit of dinner.
She does that.
The dogs are all fast asleep… I could really do with joining them.
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