Earlier in the week a
geocachical chap of my acquaintance asked if anyone fancied going for
a walk as a ruse for finding a geocache or two. He suggested a mooch
round Mereworth - somewhere I've not been before. We set off at 9am
and having picked up a crafty cache on the way six of us (and two
small dogs) met up by Mereworth church. The first church was a
multi involving solving puzzles. Everyone else had already arrived
and solved the puzzle and was prepared to set off walking half a mile
in an easterly direction. Out of a sense of doing the right thing I
had a crack at solving the puzzle. My solution involved walking
quarter of a mile in a westerly direction. Since west was the
direction we wanted to be going in, the consensus of opinion was to
try my solution. Fortunately it turned out to be right. I was rather
pleased about that. However it pays not to be too smug, as I was soon
to find out.
And then we set off along
the Mereworth Meander. Billed as a series of thirty one geocaches
along a walk off six and a bit miles we ended up with having done
thirty six over a ten mile walk. Including one which required a
soduku expert to solve a puzzle.
Half way round was a
puzzle cache that I'd solved before we'd set out. We sat down to a
picnic lunch just before going to this cache. I called up the
details, entered my solution into my geocompass, and realised that
I''d stuffed it up. My answer was miles away. So I asked for pencil
and paper and worked it all out again. This time I worked it out
properly. Perhaps somewhat appropriately this cache was called "bird
brain" (!)
Today was a good walk out
with friends. Two of our number found their 1000th caches, one found
his 1200th cache, and I got my 1450th. Both dogs were well behaved -
Suzy is never any trouble anyway, but Fudge was good for all of the
time for a change.
We finished walking at
4pm (six hours walking) and Dave asked if we fancied visiting
his new cache before going home; he'd taken one on. It would have
been rude not to have had a look, so we went to "forgotten
gate". When we got there we disturbed a couple who were
indulging in a spot of al-fresco rumpy-pumpy. It was great - Kallie
even saw their leopard-skin undercrackers. We soon found this cache
that Dave had taken on.
But of more interest was
the forgotten gate. It was huge - an enormous structure - obviously
once a gatehouse to Mereworth
Castle; now fallen into disrepair. Well off the beaten track and
left to fall to pieces.
It would have been good
to have carried on, but time was pressing so we said our goodbyes
and made our separate ways home. We had an errand to run in
Sittingbourne, so that was where we went, picking up one or two more
caches as we went. But once in Sittingbourne it was obvious from the
three mile tailbacks that the road back to Ashford was blocked. So we
decided to come home via Faversham.
No one had told us that
the road from Faversham to Ashford was also closed. We eventually
came home via Canterbury, stopping off on the way to pick up a
geocache named "Forrest and the Wombles". It was
probably too late to be messing around like that, but with a name
like "Forrest and the Wombles" we couldn't resist
it.
Today was a good day out
with friends, a good walk for the dogs, and a successful hunt for
small plastic boxes; finding all forty four of the ones we tried for.
As always there are photos
of the day on-line,
Once (eventually)
home Fudge was bathed, as was I, and the little dog was soon fast
asleep and snoring. As was I...
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