9 July 2016 (Saturday) - Godstone

I had something of a restless night last night waking at 3am and then laying awake for much of the rest of the night. I gave up trying to sleep at about 6.30am and over brekkie had a look-see on-line.

I read something of a spoiler for the new Star Trek film. I considered ranting about it but thought better of doing so. After all I never bothered going to see the most recent Star Wars film as so many other people had told me what happened in it. Suffice it to say "I don't beleive the rumour because I've actually seen Star Trek!"

We popped the lead onto "Furry Face ^TM" and set off to Godstone where we met Karl, Tracey aand the girls, aand we went for a little geo-wander. There are two series of geocaches starting from the green in Godstone. Pausing only briefly for a bit of a scramble we were soon on our way. There were rather scenic lakes and churches to be seen, bridges to be climbed under, and we even saw a pair of buzzards circling. There was talk about whether the buzzards could have made off with my dog. Looking at the size of them they might just have been able to.

It was a warm morning to be out and about; it was a very good stroke of luck which brought us right past the Barley Mow. And any qualms we might have had about grubby boots inside a nice pub were assuaged by seeing that they had little counter from the bar which opened on to the beer garden.

We stopped for two pints. After all they had good beer on.

The first circuit of caches had been billed as five and a half miles; we all felt it was a tad more than that and it was with a sense of releif that we found ourselves back at the cars a couple of hours later than planned. We hd a rather good picnic sitting on the village green, then set off in search of more hidden tupperware. After all, the second series of caches had been advertised as being a slightly shorter distance..

The paths on the first loop had been somewhat overgrown; we found the afternoon's paths somewhat more passable, even if they were a bit more up and down. There was one up-and-down bit which was rather extreme; the cache as billed as being at the top of a minor mountain. I managed the scramble up and down without breaking my neck, but the screen of the sat-nav got a rather nasty scratch fom the ordeal.

We also saw a rather well-to-do manor house flying what looked like the Royal Standard. Was the Queen visiting? We stood and stared for a few minutes trying to see her. Needless to say we didn't see any royals, but we did find another pub. It was a shame that the evening's pub wasn't as good as the morning's.

Badger ale is far superior to that of Greene King.

We got back to the cars just as it was gettng dark. We'd gone expecting to walk just under eleven miles, my GPS said we'd walked fifteen miles. I even took a few photos whilst we walked.

I slept most of the way home. Once home "er indoors ^TM" popped up to the KFC and we devoured that whilst watching "Camping". I quite like that show; I wonder if it will run to a second series?