The clocks went forward last night. And even once on British Summer Time I was wide awake at silly o'clock. Being that bored I got Furry Face's lead on him and we went for a walk before 7am. As we walked up the road there was an official-looking woman (complete with clipboard) hammering on the door of someone's house. 6.50am on Easter Sunday was a very odd time for officialdom to come calling.
And as we came back from
our walk we met a rather portly chap wearing a Santa Claus hat. It's
amazing what goes on whilst everyone else is in bed. Mind you there
is a lot to be said for everyone else being in bed - Fudge got the
complete run of the park with no other dogs to distract him. It was
good for him to run, but didn't help his socialization skills. Much
as it sounds harsh it does him good to get (gently) duffed up
by other dogs from time to time. Being a gobby little sh*te means
that most dogs back down from him. Which isn't good for him.
As we came home the snow
started again. It's Easter - British Summer Time has started, and
its snowing. In previous years Easter Sunday is synonymous with
Smarden Duck Race and a barbecue at a farm, but Smarden Duck Race
involves a lot of standing about in fields and it's too cold for
that today. So instead half a dozen of us set off to Chislehurst. Or
that was the plan. My car wouldn't start. The er
indoors TM"-mobile
had a flat tyre. So we left the knacked vehicles at home in the snow
and went in alternate transport rather later than planned.
On arrival at Chislehurst
caves we had forty minutes until the next tour started. We knew there
was a geocache in the grounds - it was a puzzle cache and we couldn't
solve the puzzle. So instead we randomly searched and soon found it.
And then into the caves.
Over the years I've heard a lot about Chislehurst caves. They weren't
what I was expecting. I imagined they would be something like the
caves at Cheddar Gorge. They weren't. They were all man-made caves -
made from chalk mining. But they nevertheless made for a good hour of
tunnel-ratting in the pitch black darkness. And (perhaps not
surprisingly) it was warmer in the caves than it was above
ground.
From the caves we went
into Petts wood for a Wetherspoons lunch. There are those that look
down on Wetherspoons. Not me - a couple of pints of stout, roast
dinner, ice cream sundae and I slept all the way home.
Once home I called out
the breakdown people who got my car going and confirmed my suspicion
that the battery was knacked. Apparently car batteries are only good
for about two years so it's due for replacing. I shall get that done
over the next day or so. I've had estimates of cost ranging from
twenty quid to a hundred quid. Depending on actual cost I may need to
re-think some of my plans for the next few weeks. Economies might
need to be made, which would be a shame.
We then wrestled the
spare tyre on to the er indoors TM"-mobile;
which is something that was far easier to blog about that it was to
do.
Being Sunday er
indoors TM"
set off bowling. I spent an hour or so clearing the undead out of
NeverWinter. And then having started a theme of "dark"
with the caves earlier in the day, we went off night caching. It's no
secret that I'm not a fan of night caching, but one had gone live
that was specially designed to be
found at night. Four of us parked up in the dark at Hothfield
common and followed the GPS to the designated start. We shone our
torches and, sure enough, we could see a reflector on a tree. And
then another. We followed a trail quite a way into the wood where we
eventually found a canister which gave us half of the required
co-ordinates. We then picked up another series of reflectors and
found the second half of the required co-ordinates. After a short
walk and a short search we realised the importance of actually
reading the instructions, and within five minutes the cache was in
our hands. And we were first to find it as well.
It
was a really well laid out night cache, a lot of time and effort had
clearly gone into the preparation. As I have said I don't like night
caching.... or that is I don't like going caching at night when you
are scrubbling about in the darkness trying to find something which
is hard enough to find in broad daylight. But looking for a cache
such as this which is clearly designed to be done at night is
different. It was great fun. It has given me some ideas for a similar
project I have in mind...
We
then went on to do another cache which, whilst not specifically a
night cache, also lent itself to being found in the dark.
I
was up before 7am this morning. To bed well after midnight,,,
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