I've been following a
hand held GPS unit in eBay. It sold today. I feel I've missed out on
not winning it, but I don't know why.
I'd quite like one for
geocachical purposes if only they were actually any good. Over the
last year of watching other people's GPS units I've come to the
conclusion that I must be missing something. The maps on GPS units
let them down. On the one hand I have my phone which shows me all the
footpaths across the countryside. On the other hand I can spend out
good money on something which doesn't show any footpaths or
bridleways at all and cannot tell what side of a river we are on.
(I'm told that by saying so I'm being unfair to GPS units...)
Logging finds is the work of five seconds on my phone, but is another
fiddle-about at home with a GPS unit.
The only advantage of a
hand held GPS unit that I can see is that it has a better battery
life. On the one hand there is something I have for free (well,
£2.50) which does the job but eats batteries. On the other there
is something which is utterly inferior in every way (other than
battery life) and will cost me £100. However I am the only
person who can see this. I am clearly missing something vital. I wish
I knew what it was.
And so on with the
business of the day. Troops rallied, and seven of us (and two
small dogs) met up behind Dover Castle. We walked down to the
White Cliffs then along to St Margarets. As we walked we looked out
for some tunnels we'd been told about. First of all to Langdon Bay
where we found the tunnels we failed to find last year. Going down
into the deep shelter was a tad slippery, but once down we had a
really good time exploring. I scrambled into the underfloor spaces
and got as far as I possibly could until the crawlspaces got too
small for me to get any further. I then had to crawl backwards for
about twenty-five yards. I always thought I was claustrophobic. I
don't think I can be.
A spot of lunch
overlooking some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, and then
on to Fan Bay. Our sources had assured us there was another deep
shelter there. GPS technology failed us entirely, but we did find two
nearby magazine stores. One of our number had a nasty slip on the wet
ground. No harm was done; it's easy to say that when someone else
falls over. But it was a reminder that tunnel-ratting isn't the
safest of pastimes.
We then went on to St
Margarets. Last year we found a wonderful deep shelter there;
hundreds of yards of tunnels to explore. Today we found then sealed.
Officialdom can be a real killjoy sometimes. So we pressed on to
other underground tunnels we'd found before and found them (mostly)
accessible; even if I did clout my head in one of them. I banged my
head on an old ventilation shaft. It did echo.
We got to the bus stop to
find we'd missed the bus back to Dover by ten minutes. The next bus
was in one hour and fifty minutes time. Over the road from the bus
stop was a pub. As often happens in my life, we activated Emergency
Plan "B". ("B" stands for beer). One pint
of Shepherd Neame's "Whitstable Bay" and two pints
of MasterBrew slipped down very well. Whilst we were drinking beer in
the sunshine our phones beeped. Email. A new geocache had gone live
in Lydd. We'd not been on a caching mission today, but had picked up
a few caches as we'd walked. With the tunnelling done for the day and
us on the way home (albeit waiting for a bus which was still an
hour away) we thought we'd go for a First to Find. There's no
denying that with having to wait an hour for a bus, a bus ride into
Dover and a twenty mile drive meant that our hopes weren't high. But
we were lucky - we got the FTF.
As always there are
photos
of the day on line. I think I caught the sun - I feel rather
tired. Or was that the beer...?
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