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21 May 2017 (Sunday) - Chiddingstone

I was out like a light last night when the puppy decided to use me as a climbing frame. I wish she wouldn’t; no matter how tired I am, once I’ve been woken, that’s it for the night.
I got up earlier than I would have liked, and had a look into Facebook as I do. During the week there had been a lot of consternation on one of the work-related pages I follow. A blood-teser in America had been rather derogatory about her place of work and the patients it attracted. However she’d been daft enough to have her place of work listed on her public profile, and then she got rather upset when they sacked her. This morning I read posts from all sorts of people similarly running down their employers and their customers. Why do people do this? I was once given a formal warning from a previous employer for posting a selfie whilst on the night shift. Apparently a picture of me brought the place into disrepute (!)

We got the leads onto the dogs and set off. Shortly before we set off I saw a post on Facebook asking for help moving house. Perhaps I should have abandoned today’s planned walk, but we’d arranged to meet up, and the dogs need walking to destruction or they do get rather fractious.
We were heading to Chiddingstone which is on the Kent/Surrey border. I’d looked at Google navigation and it had said that the direct distance was thirty miles, but for speed it recommended a route which was fifty miles (mostly along the motorway). We started driving along the motorway, but "er indoors TM" announced she wanted to go the shorter distance route. She took us along the M26, and her phone totally forgot to tell us to take junction 2A. The next turn off was at Godstone, some twenty miles later.
Oh how we laughed…
But we did get to ponder on an “incident”; the motorway notice boards were warning us of something, there were police cars parked in the refuge lanes, there was a police helicopter hovering. There was nothing to be seen. I wonder what that was all about.

We soon got to our destination, and cleaned up the puppy sick. Treacle isn’t a good traveller. We then wandered down the road to meet up with Karl, Tracey and Charlotte and we had a rather good walk through the countryside. Along paths and through meadows. We saw cows and a hawk, and we thought we heard the hawk’s babies chirping. We met a few other walkers, and their dogs, and just as we had our picnic lunch I realised that today was the monthly county geo-meet. Mind you it was in Mote Park in Maidstone. It was as well we missed it; the puppy would have been too much of a pest there.
Our walk ended at a pub where we met a geo-friend wo told us he’d not found the fourth cache on the route. However when we walked we’d been overtaken by other cachers who’d found that cache after us and before he’d been there so if it is missing we weren’t to blame.
Cache-wise today’s walk was so much better than last week’s debacle. A well-laid out route with (relatively) straightforward hides. I can thoroughly recommend it.

With a little time on our hands we then drove down to Chiddingstone proper where we had a little wander about. There was a couple of multi-caches there which involved finding out some local information to then solve a puzzle to find our quarry. And there was an Earthcache too (a simple geology puzzle). These didn’t take long, and we spent the last of the afternoon soaking up the sunshine (and the beer) in the village pub.
The drive home was entertaining; "er indoors TM"’s phone threw a serious wobbly. Its screen display bore no relation to the road layouts, and then when we were nearly home the puppy was sick in the car again.

I took a few photos as we walked. Once home I popped them up on Facebook (as I do), and with "er indoors TM" off bowling I made myself some dinner.
I like toast…


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