27 January 2013 (Sunday) - Gravy - Send.. (!)

I felt a little fragile when I woke this morning. Can't imagine why that might have been. We had some brekkie, and rallied the troops. We had plans for the day - plans that had been abandoned last week because if the snow. And despite the rain we went ahead with our plans.

The sat-nav had some difficulty with local place names, but we think we knew where it meant by "Gravy-send" and "Ro-ches-tor" and we soon parked up in Higham railway station's car park. Shoes were swapped for boots and we set off. A country walk - a walk for the dogs, and one or two geocaches along the way. Smif's stroll, Lumi's loop, and one or two other caches as we were walking past them. Some were quite straightforward to find, some were trickier. Some on roadsides, some up trees, some in hedges, and some nearly having us in small rivers. But we came up trumps on most of them. In fact we only failed on one, but that was one that had been washed away in recent floods, and we met up with the cache owner who confirmed that we'd found the correct hidey hole and told us to log it as found as we signed the log of the replacement cache.

The earlier rain had given way to a bright, if rather windy day. Our geopositioning apparatus (oo-er!) told us that we'd covered some seven miles by the time we got back to the car. As we arrived there something upset the dogs who had a serious woofing fit for no adequately explained reason.

We then came home the scenic route via a few more geocaches. One church micro saw me ripping my new trousers. These were a Christmas pressie - I wasn't impressed. Another church micro had us finding a rather obscure hidden obelisk which had been built in honour of an MP from years ago.

Just as we found a cache at a pub known locally as the "Wonky Donkey" so the rain started. Rather heavily. And bearing in mind that the light was failing we decided to call it a day and come home. A good day's walking and exploring. And we'd increased our geocaching tally by another thirty as well.

And so home. We dropped off the troops at their homes and came home. Fudge was bathed as he was filthy. He'd picked up rather a lot of mud during the day. I then stitched up the hole in my trousers - they will live to fight another day.

I was rather worried about Fudge. He seemed incredibly clingy, following me like a shadow. But when I sat down he sat with me and was soon snoring. The day's walk had worn the poor dog out.

If truth be told it had worn me out too. But it was a good walk. Geocaching is a seriously good way to find new places for walks in the countryside. And, as always, there are photos of the day on-line.