9 March 2019 (Saturday) - Norton to Lynsted (and back)


As I scoffed brekkie I watched more of my on-line botany class. Phototropisms today. All good stuff if you like that sort of thing. I then sparked up my lap-top and looked at the Internet. I had a little laugh at my cousin’s expense. Having spent a small fortune “going down the Alexa route” her iPad has crashed and now pretty much everything in her house is inoperable.
Several people had commented on the photo of Pogo I posted to Facebook yesterday. I sent out some birthday greetings. And with nothing else happening on-line I went to wake the rest of the tribe.

It wasn’t long before we were all in the car. Despite the drizzle (that wasn’t in the weather forecast) we drove round to the co-op where yet again their cash machine didn’t give me a receipt. It never does. From here we eventually drove up to the church at Norton despite Google navigation trying to take us into someone’s front drive.
We soon met up with Karl, Tracey and Charlotte and did a little field puzzle based on the opening hours of the church. As we calculated our sums so a whole load of ramblers came past. This somewhat confused Fudge who joined in with them and had to be called back. We waited for them to pass before setting off ourselves; there’s nothing worse than getting lumped in with the normal people.

The early drizzle and strong winds soon passed, and we had a rather good walk along quiet lanes and well-marked (if muddy) footpaths. Some of us enjoyed the views and the scenery, some of us carried sticks, some of us rolled in fox poo. Each to their own. There was only really one hill, and that wasn’t *too* arduous. As luck would have it, we chanced across the Black Lion in Lynsted at mid-day. "er indoors TM" had a pint of the dark fruit cider; I had a couple of pints of Goacher’s dark ale. We sat in the beer garden sheltered from the breeze and reviewed our route back to the car.

Our route did need reviewing. Quite often when geocaches are hidden they follow a numbered sequence. You start at #1, go to #2 and so on. The caches we were hunting out weren’t hidden that way. Each one needed a puzzle to solve before the actual location became evident, and with a hundred caches in the series they were effectively in smaller loops. But the number sequence didn’t really guide you as much as some judicious map-reading would. Personally, I feel this is a good thing. So often people just blindly follow the arrow of their GPS. With over a hundred targets along many lanes and paths we were able to plan a route which would not only give us quite a lot of Tupperware to find, but also allow us to plan another route for next weekend.
Having said that, I first learned map reading in the Boys Brigade over forty years ago and have been doing it regularly ever since. Some people aren’t quite so comfortable with a map and compass as I am. But (at the risk of appearing flippant), that’s not my circus, and not my monkeys. I can read a map; I’m OK !!
We had a rather good walk. I took quite a few photos.

We successfully navigated our way back to the cars. We said our goodbyes and came home. Usually the dogs are quiet on the way home from a walk; they were a tad fractious today. I wonder what that was all about?

"er indoors TM" came up with a rather good bit of scoff. We troughed it whilst watching this week’s episode of “Star Trek: Discovery” which is surprisingly slipping behind “The Orville” with every episode, then watched “Big Bang Theory” and “Derry Girls”.

I really should go to bed – I’ve an early start tomorrow.

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