22 December 2019 (Sunday) - Ash - In The Rain


Having had the environment agency messaging me the last couple of nights, I was woken at half past two by the boss to ask if I would swap shifts later in the week… The messages stopped at three o’clock, and I eventually got back to sleep.
I got up four hours later and spent a frustrating ten minutes stopping Fudge “playing piggyback” on Sid. I wish he wouldn’t do that. As I scoffed toast I peered into the Internet. Some eight-year-old child has made twenty-six million dollars this year through reviewing toys on You-Tube. Again I have to question some of my life choices.

We got ourselves organised. With the reliability of the "er indoors TM"-mobile’s clutch still undecided, I drove us all out to Ash where we met Karl, Tracy and Charlotte. As we left home it was raining, but the weather forecast said the rain would soon be gone. When we got to Ash I did wonder if anyone had told the rain what the weather forecast had said. But I put on my waterproofs as did everyone else, and we set off confident in the belief that idiot enthusiasm would triumph over common sense.

It did.

We started off walking across what I can only describe as a quagmire, but the dogs always love the opportunity to run off of the leads. And the rain soon stopped. We had a rather good walk along some rather pretty fields and lanes. We saw donkeys and rather bedraggled sheep (that I mistook for pigs). Treacle found a rather humungous stick to carry (she loves a big stick). I must admit that I did wonder if we should have abandoned before we started; I’m glad we went ahead with the walk.
Mind you there was one “episode”… Toward the end of the walk a rabbit shot across the field. Pogo set off in hot pursuit. For no reason that I could fathom the rabbit turned one hundred and eighty degrees and sprinted back the way it came. Just as Fudge and Treacle saw the rabbit, the stupid lagomorph (that’s posh for “rabbit”!) ran head-first into a tree. We are of the opinion that this stunned the rabbit and it was this that allowed it to be captured. In the few seconds it took me to get to the three dogs they were sharing the spoils of their victory.
 The take-home message here is to *never* let your dog near anyone’s pet rabbit, but I suppose that at least it was a quick clean kill… and is it wrong of me to feel just the teensiest bit of pride in my dogs? – they really are wolves at heart.

Geocache-wise it was a rather good outing. All caches needed a puzzle to be solved in order to locate them. The puzzles were relatively easily solved, and the caches were (mostly) straightforward finds. And on the way I found my twelve thousandth cache too.
I took a few photos whilst we walked.

We said our goodbyes, and from Ash we drove up to Margate. "Daddy’s Little Angel TM" had given us a mission to perform for her. Whilst we were in Margate we took the dogs for a little walk along the sea front. Half an hour on Margate sea front was *far* colder than three hours walking across fields and footpaths.

We came home. Fortunately I was able to park outside the house when we came in. When we’d left, everything was packed nicely. When we came home everything was strewn across the back seat of the car. But (amazingly) the dogs were quite clean. In the past they’ve needed baths after a walk like today’s. Today a wet wipe did the trick. I suspect all the mud and dirt is in the back of my car.

"er indoors TM" boiled up a rather good bit of dinner, and as it is that time of year we opened the Christmas stout. You can’t go that far wrong with a bottle of Snow Top. As we scoffed and guzzled we watched “Blackadder’s Christmas Carol”. It was rather good. I then slept through the new Netflix film “Klaus”.
Oh – and we drank the last of the Werther’s sweetie vodka stuff… I might make a Mark II tomorrow so we’ve got something for Christmas…

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