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2 March 2019 (Saturday) - Chislet


A rather restless night. Treacle brought a bone up to bed and wanted to spend the night chomping on it. The rest of the wolf-pack wanted some as well, and a minor scrap ensued. "er indoors TM" took the bone away, and Treacle whinged for hours wanting it back.
I eventually gave up and watched an episode of “Titans” until everyone finally got up.

As I scoffed a hot cross bun I looked at the new series of puzzle geocaches that went live last night. I solved one or two, others eluded me. Yet again a tremendous amount of effort has gone into creating loads of puzzles which mean very little to most people. I expect this will go the way of pretty much every other puzzle series in that I will swap the solutions that I have for the solutions that friends have. Whilst it is really taboo to admit to this, this is what many people actually do.
I don’t see why people mess about creating geo-puzzles in the first place. The hobby is a treasure hunt. If people want to solve puzzles then why not do a course in logic with the Open University, or buy a book of puzzles from the corner shop? Puzzle caches boil my piss. For the uninitiated, here’s how to solve a geo-puzzle. Call up any puzzle geocache on the Internet. You might read a meaningless phrase and see a picture of a tennis racquet and a bag of crisps. It means absolutely nothing, does it? But look closer. The web page appears on a screen. The letter “c” appears in that word. And you *see* the screen. “C”? “see”? – sea !!  That’s where the cartoon character “Aquaman” lives. In the film “Aquaman”, “Aquaman” was played by the actor Jason Momoa who was born in Hawaii. Hawaii !! – so the puzzle is all about the states of America.
(You might think I’m being facetious here, but that *really* is how the logic works in some geo-puzzles)

Finding a pair of socks I never knew I had I got dressed. Despite "er indoors TM" feeling less than one hundred per cent we took the dogs out. We drove up to Chislet where we met Karl, Tracey and Charlotte and we had a rather good walk despite one or two hiccups.
We set off on out planned route. We found our first target film pot under a rock by a telegraph pole. Our second target would seem to have gone missing. To be fair, our second target was actually one I had found five years ago, but I didn’t remember it. From here we followed a farm track to a country lane where we found our next targets. We found two and was then approached by a chap who asked if we were lost. I said we weren’t. He said we were, and he said that we were on private land. He politely but firmly told us to piss off, and (to be fair to the fellow) when we got to the end of the lane, sure enough there was a sign saying that we were on a private road. Woops!

We quickly re-planned our route, and after getting clagged up with mud had a rather good walk along country lanes and bridleways. There was a dodgy five minutes when we stopped to let a horse come past. Pogo took exception to the horse, lunged at it and snapped his lead. Fortunately the horse wasn’t bothered.

Today’s walk wasn’t a long one, and we were soon at the Gate Inn. Last winter we’d visited the place and had been incredibly impressed at the ale selection. We’d planned today’s walk to end at that pub. It was something of a shame to find that the place was closed for refurbishment.
They say disasters come in threes…

Geocaching-wise today was something of a mixed bag. Some of the caches were straightforward finds. Some (shall we be polite here) weren’t where I would have put them. Pretty much all of them had wet logs, and we logged “needs archiving” on two of them.

We got back to the cars, and after a quick bite to eat we drove up to a pub we knew, only to find that the Prince of Wales in Hoath was heaving. So we drove on to the Huntsman and Horn in Herne Bay for a crafty half of weak shandy. You can see what we got up to by clicking here.
I had four pints of rather good ale, and slept most of the way home.

Once home I had a look-see at the Internet (as I do). This morning I’d messaged friends about the new cache series that went live last night. With pictures of Mario Brothers and Space Invaders all over the place, I am reliably informed that the theme of the caches was the French equivalent of the artist Banksy. I felt rather smug that me earlier description of puzzle caches was clearly spot-on.
"er indoors TM" boiled up a rather good bit of dinner, and once it was scoffed I used my new-found information to try to solve those geo-puzzles. I didn’t solve any so I watched telly instead.
I quite like “Titans” – I don’t seem to sleep through it…

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