A few weeks ago (in
the company of some gallant souls) I set off to walk the first
part of the Essex Way. Today, depite the weather forecast, we decided
we'd go back and walk some more of it. Bearing in mind the winter
days are shorter we knew we'd need an early start.
Fudge's expression had to
be seen to be beleived at 4.30am.
We had a quick brekkie
of coffee and Belgian buns and set off. Firstly to Singleton to
collect Fudge's pal (and her associate!) and then on to
Teynham; Matt's car was in the garage. As we drove we had competing
sat-navs shouting instructions. "er indoors TM"
was sticking with the tried and trusted Google whilst the back seat
driver was using an app called Waze. Initially my money was on Waze
because it was confidently predicting a shorter journey time. However
my confidence was shaken when it transpired that Waze was aimed at
where we starting walking (which was ten miles closer than
Google's target of where we were actually meeting).
Despite Waze's
machinations we made our way through the hamlet of Margaret Roding
and along Wiggly Bush Lane to the Church at Good Easter. Once
assembled everyone piled into my car and we drove ten miles away to
Chipping Ongar.
Seven of us (and two
small dogs) then walked back to where we'd left the cars. A
simple enough proposition...
It was a really good
walk. We started walking at 8.30am and finished just over seven hours
later having tracked down over seventy elusive geocaches over a
distance of about eleven miles. As we walked I fell over (with a
heavy thud) in the mud, and Suzy-pup ran off for half an hour.
And we had our picnic lunch in the porch of one of the churches in
Willingdale whilst overlooking the other. The village has two chuches
which share the same churchyard. How weird is that?
We set off expecting a
wet afternoon, and within minutes of finishing lunch so the rain
started. It was heavy, and we did get wet. But on the positive side
it didn't rain for *that* long really and we were soon at the
chosen end-point.
I must admit I was
expecting the walk to have taken a lot longer than it did. We were
all planning to be finishing the walk in the dark; as it was we could
(probably) have gone on to have found another dozen caches in
the remaining daylight.
But instead we piled into
the two cars we'd left at Good Easter and drove back to find my car
in Chipping Ongar. Just as we got there so the really heavy rain
started.
As we drove home I
realised just how much I prefer not driving. What with the logistics
of getting from A to B we needed my seven-seater. There's no denying
that I was rather wilting from the driving by the time we'd got home.
Once home we washed the
mud from the dog then washed the mud from our boots. And with a
rather good pasta bake we had a rather disappointing bottle of
porter.
I took a
few photos whilst we were out. Mostly when it was dry but a few
in the rain I put those on line then thought about an early night.
I'm on the early shift tomorrow...
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