Last night a new geocache
went live. I looked it up on the map; it seemed to be out in the
middle of the countryside. Chatting on-line with a friend who knew
the area it turned out that the place was on very steep slopes and
that the footpaths there are treacherous at the best of times.
Knowing full well that I would be wide awake early in the morning I
thought I would go out at first light for a First to Find.
This morning I checked
the e-log to see someone had been daft enough to go out overnight.
Much as I like the smugness that goes with being first, there are
limits. Falling arse over tit in the dark on the Wye Downs on a
December night would very likely be something you wouldn't survive.
so rather than going out with "Furry Face TM"
I had another two hours laying awake in bed.
I'd actually dozed off
when a text woke me. I'd forgotten all about fence fixing. After a
firework had destroyed a fence panel a few weeks ago I'd offered to
help with the repairs. Today was fix-it day. Chippy picked me up at
9am and the job was done within fifteen minutes. A crafty bacon
sarnie and I was home and walking "Furry Face TM"
by 10 o'clock.
As we were passing the
place, we popped into the vets. It gets him used to going in there
and he doesn't think of it as somewhere of which he should be
frightened. Whilst we were there we met a staffie which was trying to
tear the throat out of every other living thing on the planet except
the small woman it was draggging ono the lead behind it. That woman
looked as though she was about to cry. Some people have the nastiet
dogs.
Once home we settled
"Furry Face TM" and we went out on
the main business of the day. The Kent Geocacher's Christmas bash was
on today. Pretty much everyone who is anyone in the local fraternity
of hunting small pllastic boxes met up at a pub just outside
Maidstone. We had a rather good lunch, and chatted with friends. We
met people who up till now have merely been strange names on pieces
of paper found in the countryside. There must have been over fifty
people along.
Whilst we were there a
series of caches went live. We could have gone out, but we were too
busy chatting. However we did go out once those who went earlier had
returned. WIth the co-ordinates of the bonus cache revealed we (we
being about twenty of us) blatently followed them to the bonus
cache. The bonus was something special. It had the highest difficulty
level; it was a sneaky hide. And it had the highest terrain level -
it was ten (or so) metres up a tree.
Those who know what they
are doing rigged up ropes and, one by one, those who wanted to go for
the cache were hoisted up the tree. I don't know much about ropes,
but I can pull on one. And that was what I did for much of the
afternoon. So many people thanked me for helping to pull them up a
tree. I was just grateful to have been a part of what turned out to
be a really fun afternoon. And I was very grateful to be hoisted up
myself to be able to claim my third 5/5 cache.
With the last person
safely down just as darkness was falling we all went back inside the
pub. Whilst we'd been out the raffle had been called. I had won what
I would have considered to have been the first prize. A selection of
novely geocaches. I won't say what they are, but some time over the
next few weeks I shall be setting a new series of caches.
Today was a really good
cachers' meet.It's actually now a year since I attended my first ever
geo-meet. I've now been to nineteen of them (having organised two
myself) and today's was up there with the best of them.
Home, where "Furry
Face TM" was still chewing on the bone
I''d bought him from "Pets at Home" this morning. We
thought about having some tea; we were neither of us hungry. The pub
lunch had beeen more than enough. And with er indoors TM"
off to the film night I setled down with my dog and watched dross on
the telly...
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