I felt rather iffy last
night and as the rest of the world celebrated at a festival in a
nearby park, or at a surprise birthday party or at a family wedding I
had an early night. I slept right through until 6.30am when "Furry
Face TM" jumped onto my chest and started
scratching. I wish he hadn't.
I got up, did my morning
ablutions and checked the world via Facebook. It would seem that
there is a youth theatre in Ashford. I never knew that. We regularly
go to the one in Maidstone as they put on some excellent shows.
Unfortunately the Ashford group's next showing clashes with something
else in the diary. Such is life. I shall have to keep an eye on their
website and look out for future productions.
Whilst I waited for er
indoors TM" to emerge from her pit I
played with the geocaching website. After yesterday's mission to
Pluckley I have now found every cache within a radius of five and a
half miles of my house. With the long summer evenings coming up over
the next couple of months I might just start planning one or two
evening walks just to widen that radius a little bit more. After all
there are only six more to find to expand that radius of found caches
to six miles. In fact I've planned one
such walk for Wednesday evening. If any of my loyal readers fancy
an evening's gentle stroll, do come along.
And talking of gentle
strolls, Chippy arrived,and we set off (via Singleton) to
Folkestone where the tribes gathered at the Admiralty before setting
off for a spot of tunnel-ratting at Lydden Spout. Steve had gone on
as an advance party and sorted out parking spots, and soon we were
walking along the tops of the White Cliffs to our old stomping
ground.
The sealed cover to the
old plotting rooms had been ripped off, and we were soon down the
ladder and noseying about in the old underground rooms. It never
fails to amaze me just how quickly it gets cold and very dark in
those tunnels. I really need to get a better torch, and I hadn't been
down the hole for more than a few seconds when I clouted my head.
I came out of these
tunnels earlier than everyone else to take over dog-sitting duties;
it's not fair to attempt to take the three smallest of our party down
the holes. And once everyone else had had a good explore we moved
over to the old derelict gun emplacements. To the untrained eye
there's not a lot to see now. However if you know where to look and
are of a rather daft disposition there are about a hundred yards of
tunnels just underneath these emplacements that can easily be entered
and explored. And one of those sets of tunnels can easily be exited
as well. There was another tunnel that I was told was too small for
us to get into. Pah! It wasn't too small to get into at all. However
getting out again took
some doing.
We found the geocache
which had been placed nearby in the last week, and ate our picnic
lunch before embarking on the next mission. If you are prepared to do
some scrambling and you know where to scramble, there are hundreds
of yards of tunnels that can be accessed from the side of the White
Cliffs. You need to go down a rather (very) steep slope for
about a hundred yards, then clamber along a ledge for ten yards and
heave yourself up a very steep incline. There is a rope to help you
up the last part. When you get to where the rope is anchored you find
a small hole into the cliffs. Anyone with any sense would look at
that small hole and turn around. Mind you anyone with any sense
probably would never find that small hole in the first place. On
clambering into that small hole you'll find a rock fall which would
persuade most people that they should turn back. But us tunnel-rats
aren't like most people. And once we'd got over the second rock fall
we were into a veritable warren of tunnels.
I had very mixed feelings
when I when into these tunnels on the cliff edge. For some months I'd
been planning to put a geocache in these tunnels. I would give the
tunnel entrance as the starting co-ordinates, and would use a series
of arrow painted with ultra-violet paint to lead the cacher deep into
the tunnels and up a flight of stairs to where I would hide a cache
in a rather tricky location. Scoring the cache as 5/5 it would have
been rather unique. However I should have been quicker. The cache up
at the gun emplacements might be fifteen minutes scramble away, but
it was only sixty eight metres (as the crow flies). According
to geocachical rules this is one hundred metres too close, and so my
little scheme was scuppered. On the one hand I was a tad miffed that
my plans had failed (I know of nowhere else where I might put such
a cache). On the other hand I was rather relieved because cache
maintenance would not be easy. And also I'd need permission to hide
the cache on the railway's land. After several months the railway
people had still not replied to my emails. Oh well; such is life. I
shall just stick a cache up a nearby tree instead and see if anyone
breaks their neck climbing after that one.
By now we were rather
worn out, and little Sid was beginning to flag in the heat of the hot
day, so we started to wander back to the cars. Or that is the drivers
wandered back to the cars; everyone else wandered to the pub whilst
the drivers brought the cars up. The
Royal Oak in Capel is an odd place. When you walk into the place
you get definite vibes of it being "a local pub for local
people", but I've always found them to be friendly and
welcoming. Take this afternoon for example. Little Sid is a
chunky-monkey. Pugs aren't built for heat; and I was carrying him as
he was worn out. The pub staff had seen us coming, and actually met
us as we arrived with a bowl of cool water for the poor little pup.
It's little things like that which make me want to go back there
again.
With pints drunk we set
off home. It seemed odd to be home before 4pm on a Sunday; but it was
good to have a little slobbing about time; even if we did have to put
up with next door clanging on the piano. I don't really mind them
having a piano - as far as I'm concerned their piano gives me and my
dog carte blanche to make as much noise as we like. mind you,
it does seem odd that for all that they clang on their piano they
never seem to show any improvement on the thing.
I checked my emails
again. A new geocache had gone live on the other side of town. We
rushed out in the vague hope of a First to Find - we were third. FTFs
go fast in Ashford. And with er indoors TM"
off bowling I settled down in front of the telly for an evening's
DVD-a-thon. I needed to do something restful - I've had a busy day...
As always there are
photos
of our day on-line.
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