Despite not being too
cold at all last night, as I drove to the shower block (yes,
drove!) I saw that the thermometer in the car was registering
1oC. I was surprised by that; it certainly felt warmer.
Having used the
facilities I made myself a cuppa and watched the world go by from our
gazebo. It was really peaceful watching the mist burn away at 6.30am.
After a while the chap in
the next tent emerged, smiled, took his tent down and was gone by
7am. I felt rather sorry for this chap; he'd arrived on Friday
morning and asked if he could set up near my tent. I was fine with
that, and as he set up he said he'd come down on the train from
London and was on his own. Bearing in mind that many of the
attractions of this weekend were a car drive distant, the chap was at
a disadvantage already. Unfortunately having the rest of the Kent
cachers arriving to be loudly told that there was an intruder in our
midst (and having him pointed out) seemed to scare the chap
away.
I only saw him maybe a
couple of times during the entire weekend. I hope he had a good time
wherever he'd been during the daytimes.
We had a rather good
fry-up for brekkie, and then together with our new friend from
Derbyshire we went off geocaching. After all, what else do you do at
geo-camp. Only a small walk of a couple of miles today; on the way we
met an old friend who walked with us till we finished our circuit.
The weather was glorious
and we got back to camp to find that the tents were dry, as we'd
hoped. The plan was to have all the camp packed away by 4pm in
readiness for the closing event. We were packed away by 2.30pm, so we
went geocaching. First of all to a cache based on Nigel
Molesworth. I can't beleive that no one seems to have heard of
Molesworth. We then got a river-based cache which was supposed to be
done from a canoe, but with a bit of effort we did it from a bridge,
and then we took our lives in our hands finding a cache on a frankly
dangerous roundabout on a dual carriageway. It's odd that a cache on
a roundabout on a local housing estate was removed by the
geo-authorities for safety reasons, but one which sees cars speeding
by at over fifty miles per hour is quite acceptable.
And so back to base where
we said our goodbyes and we came home. Packing away didn't take too
long, and once we'd retrieved "Furry Face TM"
from "My Boy TM" we crashed out in
front of the telly.
Roll on the next mega
geo-camp...
On reflection... It's no
secret that I didn't really want to go to this weekend's camp. It was
too early in the year (read "going to be too cold to camp"),
and very few of our number were up for it. But as it turned out our
immediate party was nearly double what I expected it to be, and the
vast majority of people at the event were warm and welcoming. More so
than at the kite festivals which I have attended for over ten years.
I feel unsure when inviting anyone to a kite festival, but I wouldn't
hesitate to suggest that people might like to geo-camp.
In retrospect I would
have liked to have camped a lilttle closer to the main action (we
*were* several hundred yards further than we might have been but that
was my fault(!) ), and it was a shame that with many of the
planned activities being up to ten miles away, anyone without the use
of a car would have missed out on a lot of fun.
But it was (for me)
a great weekend. I hear there are plans to do another next year; I
have already volunteered to help.
And (as always)
there are some
photos of the weekend here.
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