I
woke this morning with quite a lot of pain from my back. It's been
playing up for over a week now. It should stop hurting soon,
shouldn't it? Over a spot of brekkie I checked my emails and caught
up with the world.
Something
on Facebook made me smile. A
distant family relative is standing for political office in
Hastings, claiming to be "already working hard for his home
patch". Other family members assure me that he considers his
"home patch" not to be where he lives, but to be
where he seeks said political office. His aunt has publicly described
him as "a little shit". I did snigger.
Lisa
and Earle called round. The Lisa-mobile was due a service near
Hawkhurst this morning, and whilst the car was having things done
Lisa was planning to pick up some caches in the area. Did I fancy
going along? I did.
Leaving
Furry Face at home (for a change) we made our way to the
garage where we left the car (and Earle) and set off into the
wild blue yonder. Hawkhurst is somewhere I’ve driven through many
times, but rarely (if ever) stopped off and had a nosey round.
Parts of the area are quite scenic. We found some rather nice back
alleys, one of which featured a geocache several yards from where I
thought the designated coordinates should have been. We found the end
point of a multi-cache just as the snow started falling.
We
found ourselves following a clearly marked footpath into private
land, and then after a scramble we made our way onto a disused train
track. The rails had long since gone, but the old train route was
clearly visible. A little way along this route was an old train
tunnel. There was a geocache hidden in this tunnel. In the dark, in
mud that was knee deep in places.
Having
found that cache and eventually having got back onto recognised
rights of way (as opposed to random woodland) we used the
ordnance survey function of my phone (woo!) to get to
Bedgebury. We’d been there a few weeks ago and hadn’t done half
of the geocaches in those woods. We’d spotted an obvious loop of
ten caches that we thought we could do in an hour. And we did. It was
at his point that I found my 1200th cache. 1200 in just over six
months is rather good going.
By
now it was mid-day and we made our way back to collect the car. There
was a minor hiccup. The car was in bits and needed a vital component;
one that none of the local auto-suppliers had. So with the promise of
one being available on Monday we left the fragments of the
Lisa-mobile in the garage and scrounged a lift to Staplehurst where
we took the train back to civilisation. Apart from leaving cashpoint
cards on the train the journey home was relatively uneventful. Once
home I fussed the dogs (Sidney was in residence) and watched
an episode of Babylon 5 over a boneless Banquet from the KFC. I felt
I deserved a treat.
Being
the last Friday of the month I set off to astro club. There was quite
a bit of talk of space rock thingies. I rather suspect that the
masses have forgotten the origin of the term "space rock
thingies". I just might need to post "patent
pending" on the Facebook page,
The
main talk of the evening was on Pluto. I learned quite a bit.
Obviously a lot of time was spent on Pluto's recent demotion and it's
having lost it's "planet" status. On reflection I
can't help but feel the whole "planet"/"dwarf
planet" argument is daft. It's not at all about science;
it's about definitions.
It
don't matter how you dress it up, Pluto is a planet. Always was,
always will be...
No comments:
Post a Comment