31 May 2013 (Friday) - Mote Park

Sometimes when faced with insomnia I lay in bed and get wound up. Other times I get up and do something. This morning I had my morning shave at 4am, then out the recycling box out, I then did the washing up and put some laundry into the washing machine. I went back to bed after forty minutes in the hope that having done something I might then be a bit more tired and might sleep. It didn't work. I lay awake until giving up shortly before 7am.

Over a spot of brekkie I watched another psychology lecture. Today we were covering the principles of successful flirting and why gambling is so addictive. I then spent half an hour playing Bubble Witch Saga whilst waiting for a second load of laundry to wash, then got the lot on to the line to dry in the hope that it wouldn't rain.

Lisa arrived and we set off on a geo-adventure. First of all to Ham Street. On Wednesday we tried for a virtual cache and gave up after half an hour. Today we found it within two minutes. We then carried on through Tenterden to Headcorn where we found a couple more caches and on to Sutton Valance where we had two failures.

Pausing only briefly in Maidstone for a fifty per cent success rate on a few caches we made our way to the main target of the day - Mote Park. There is a multi-cache in Mote Park of extreme difficulty. We found the first part easily enough. I say "found" - we could see it up a tree, but couldn't get close. Therefore we were stuffed for the second part. However by the use of some judicious cheating we figured out that the third clue was hidden under a bridge somewhere. So we scouted out the park until we found a likely looking bridge and sent Lisa in the river. There's no denying that she could have done a better job. She came out with both boots full of water and no cache found. We shall have to go back and do it properly.

So in the face of failure we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves down, emptied the water out of our boots, wrung out our socks and found the ice cream stall. And then walked back to the car. I am reliably informed that one kilometre is a long way to walk barefoot.

Once at the car dry socks and trousers were put on, and we made our way back to Ashford. Via one or two more caches on the way.

Once home I got the laundry in from the line, got the undercrackers in to scrub, and set off to astro club. Attendance was really down tonight. Perhaps only half the usual turn-out. I wonder if that was because tonight was a telescope workshop. But those of us who were there had a good time. And in a novel break with tradition the clouds pulled back, and for the first time in about eighteen months we were able to get the telescopes out and do some astronomy.