I
woke perhaps a little earlier that I might have done this morning.
After a spot of brekkie I put Fudge's coat on him. He wasn't happy,
but it was a cold day. We collected those of the troops who were up
for a walk in freezing temperatures, and made our way to deepest
Sussex where it really wasn't that cold.
Catsfield
is my old stomping-ground. When in the Boys Brigade
I used to hike round the area a lot. So today we went on a geocaching
mission there. The "Catsfield
Catastrophe"
was described by the originator as an "amble
around Catfield countryside following the 1066 route. Just remember
it will be a catastrophe if you don't bring the appropriate toolkit!
" The required toolkit being two 17mm spanners, string, magnet,
and a litre of water, Some of the caches we found were rather
traditional; even dull. Some were more interesting. Some were frankly
works of genius. Whoever had put the series of caches out had clearly
put a lot of effort into planning an excellent country walk, and in
making some of the most interesting geocaches I've ever found.
Floating logs from tubes, unspannering logs, solving co-ordinates
from anagrams. Pure genius.
Or...
(at the
risk of appearing negative),
it was a work of genius when it was first made. Geocaches by their
very nature are exposed to the elements. Some of the paper logs in
the caches we found were wet. That is unavoidable and a rather
trivial criticism. Some of the cleverer caches were broken, which was
a great shame. Some of them were missing. Actually missing - we found
obvious parts of them.
In
several cases we read on-line logs reporting these problems a few
months ago. I'm hoping the cache owners have merely not seen these
logs and haven't abandoned the series - it was one of the best loads
of caches I've seen.
As
we wandered round a fourth member of our bunch joined the "1000+
club";
having found his 1000 cache. Fudge and Suzie didn't squabble once,
and the snow only flurried occasionally. An excellent day out.
We
finished our stroll with daylight to spare, and a quick perusal of
the map showed a series of caches nearby designed for winter caching
- to be done as drive-bys. So we picked up those ten, and a few
others while passing.
By
the time we got home both me and Fudge were looking forward to
putting our feet up. Him more so than me - he has more feet.
And
my back would seem to be getting better. Two weeks of agony, and it's
better in time too go back to work. Ho hum...
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