Treacle made herself comfortable on the
bed last night, and I tried to make myself comfortable around her. For the most
part I failed.
I got up and fussed Fudge. He’s on the
mend, but oh-so-slowly. I scoffed brekkie, and as I scoffed I reviewed the
recent logs on my Great Chart geo-series. Every time someone finds a geocache
they have to write a little story. Most people write nothing of consequence and
(to be honest) since I have getting
on for a hundred active caches I don’t read the “Found it” logs. But having had that message over the weekend I
thought I’d better investigate. It seems that a few people have had issues at
the half-way point of the series.
Fudge was too poorly to walk, so I took
Treacle for a little outing. We drove out to Great Chart and started our walk.
I thought I might as well do a complete maintenance run whilst I was at it, and
I got a bit cross. Inside each geocache is a bit of paper to sign. To stop it
getting wet I put that bit of paper inside a film pot which goes in the cache.
Most of the film pots had gone. Now
bearing in mind that the paper inside was still there and that the caches were
still there, where had the film pots gone. Stolen by other cachers for their
own use? If people are that poor I’ll buy them new ones to save myself the
inconvenience of having to replace them.
We had a good walk through fields and
woods meeting goats, horses and cows. Treacle even chased a squirrel. All was
fine until we got just past point 8 where the footpath had been “sort of” blocked, but was passable. From
here on in was somewhere that people had often whinged but the footpath was
clearly marked. There *were* horses
in the field but there always had been.
But when I got to the lane at point 10 I
saw a notice from the council which was all about a statutory footpath
diversion. Effectively that stuffed up my route. We then followed the route
back to the car collecting the caches as we went. I’ve archived the lot; the
walk is impassable now.
One thing which boils my piss about
geocaching is that people start off by finding a magnetic jobbie stuck to a
road sign and then just carry on. Very few people come to it with any
experience of hiking in the countryside. Few people realise that you can’t just
randomly wander wherever you like. And few people realise that maps are
different. Open Street maps are simply rubbish; they don’t feature most of the
rights of way. Most people won’t use Ordnance Survey maps as they cost. And
most people don’t realise the difference between a closed gate and a statutory
footpath closure.
If people had told me there was a
statutory order some months ago…
We came home and I wasted a few minutes
trying to repair a water feature. But I didn’t have the right attachment so I
gave up.
I was just about to pootle on-line when
I thought I’d check the house phone for messages. There was a message from the
police following up on my call about nutty-next-door that I made to them on
Sunday. They asked if I could phone them back and quote reference blah-de-blah.
So I did. Apparently my ex-neighbour is alive and well, but “Damien” (Force Number 59827) made it crystal clear that he was far too busy
to do anything other than say that he was alive, and rather insinuated that what
this chap does with his life is none of my business. I suggested he checked the
records to find out why I was concerned; “Damien”
said he was too busy.
My phone then upgraded its operating
system (which was nice for it) and I
then emptied the photos I’d taken over the Bank Holiday weekend and put them on-line. Bearing in mind I’d
worked for a large part of two of the days I was amazed to see just how much I
fitted in between leaving work on Friday and going back this afternoon.
Never a dull moment.
I drove to work via the Aylesford
aquatic centre where I go the right attachment for the water feature, and then
on to work….
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