8 May 2022 (Sunday) - Kingswood

“er indoors TM spent a bit of time sorting the carnage of the house yesterday and we now have a tiny bit of space in what was and what will be the kitchen. Not much, but enough for the toaster. Oh, how I’ve missed having brekkie.

I scoffed toast whilst I had a look at the Internet. It was still there, and pretty much the same as ever. Quite a lot of it was squabbles in the aftermath of last week’s elections. So many people follow political parties in much the same way that they follow football teams. I know of people who would vote Conservative or Labour even if they were led by Satan himself and had policies of eating babies; purely because that party is “their party”. None of the people squabbling had any idea of the actual policies advocated by their political choice, and (quite frankly) didn’t care about them either.

This is what is wrong with our so-called “democracy” isn’t it?

Mind you a friend of a friend was posting photos of his holiday in Svalbard. This is somewhere I would *really* like to go , but I’ve heard tell it ain’t cheap. This chap was saying that the going rate up there for a tube of Pringles is four quid. That is exactly double the price in Tesco.

I also saw I had over fifty emails of which I wanted/needed maybe three. So many emails from recruitment agencies asking me to join LinkedIn. Are professional blood testers in such short supply? Bearing in mind that most hospital labs have vacancies they can’t fill, I suspect they (we) are.

 

We got ourselves and the dogs together and set off a little later than usual. We drove up to Kingswood (the one near Maidstone) where we met Karl, Tracey and Charlotte and set off on a little walk (as always) guided by a series of geocaches.

We started off walking round the rather pretty village, then moved into the woods which were beautiful. The bluebells were in full bloom, the footpaths were clearly marked (if somewhat at odds with the maps), and there weren’t too many normal people getting in our way. We found a rather good spot for lunch, and watched a rather large buzzard flying about. I kept a close eye on the pups; I don’t think the buzzard would have had them… but he was certainly big enough.

We met a couple of other dogs, but it was little Bailey (the smallest by far of the wolf-pack) who kicked off.

I took  few photos as we walked.

Geocaching-wise it was a really good walk. There were four puzzles to be solved before we left home. Straightforward ones, but one I had to work at. There was a range of container sizes, from tiny up to rather huge. Some were straightforward hides, some not so; including one unusual container the like of which I had never seen before (in over fourteen thousand finds). There were two tree climbs which defeated us; we could see the caches up both trees. We couldn’t get high enough up the first one; the second one needed ropes and climbing equipment.

However there was a minor issue… Each cache was titled “Kingswood Caching” and then had a little bit of title which was unique to each hide. However on the GPS screen all I could see was the “Kingswood Caching” bit. Personally I’d rather the caches in the series had started with a number to guide us round; without a number we were dependent on judicious map work to ensure we didn’t miss any of the caches. But that’s just a piddling detail really. Someone had taken a lot of time and put in a lot of effort to give us a guided walk through some rather pretty woods, for which I am very grateful.

 

We came home, and as I posted photos to the internet so “er indoors TM and all four dogs snored like things possessed. Pogo and Treacle (and “er indoors TM) are used to the distance, but was it too much for the puppies? Possibly. Mind you they were carried for a lot (most) of the walk.

“er indoors TM sorted a bit of dinner, then once I’d found the iron (it took some finding!) I ironed shirts whilst watching an episode of “Orange in the New Black”. What with having the contents of the kitchen and the living room in the way, this was the first telly program I’d watched for a while. As I ironed “er indoors TM took the puppies to visit “Daddy’s Little Angel TM” and to collect a large tank for her. Apparently “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction TM  is getting a pet axolotl…


 

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