11 January 2020 (Saturday) - Treacle's Turnip


I slept for over ten hours last night; that rarely happens. And my morning shave took some doing as I somehow forgot to have a shave yesterday. I suppose this is the aftermath of a night shift.
As "er indoors TM" fought to get the dogs to go “do their business” (no one wanted to go outside today) I scoffed toast and peered into the Internet. There was a mini-squabble kicking off about puzzle caches on the local geocaching page. Finding a geocache can be hard enough when you know the location. Some people further obfuscate the whole thing by hiding the location by use of puzzles. Some of these puzzles are relatively easy to solve, some are difficult. Some are just plain ridiculous. Some puzzles can only be solved if you have “insider knowledge” of the person who set the puzzle. And I know of one that doesn’t even have a solution – you have to ask the person who set it for the answer and he’ll tell you.
But even on the more simple puzzles, given that the puzzle which is about (say) six racehorses, do you need to know the Grand Nationals that they won, the starting odds, the year they won a given race, the year the horse was born…
Someone somewhere has published an on-line list of solutions to thousands of these puzzle caches. In fact there’s quite a few such lists. Unfortunately I can’t find any which are more that two years old. I wish I could. Personally I have no qualms in blagging the locations of a geocache in this way. The game is a treasure hunt; not an exercise in logic problems. However this has been seen as a bad thing by some.  Several people were bemoaning the existence of such lists… many of whom I’ve given such answers to in the past. Oh well… people love a good moan…

We got ourselves and the dogs organised and drove out to Junction 10a on the M20 where "er indoors TM" capped a bouncer, and then went on to Ivychurch where allegedly there was a bouncer, but we couldn’t get close. (It’s a Munzee thing!)
With bouncers capped (or not) we went on to St Clement’s Church where we met Karl, Tracy and Charlotte. As we got ourselves ready for the off we were very conscious of being watched by one of the locals. He was fascinated with us and was openly watching our every move. I had no idea that the sight of me putting on a pair of wellies could be so captivating.

We were soon off for a walk. To be honest I had reservations about the Romney Marsh in January, but we’d been told that it wasn’t that muddy, and that some of the route would be seriously overgrown later in the year. It wasn’t at all muddy, and some of the route was bad enough today and would probably be impassable in a few months’ time. Mind you that wind was cold.
The route was rather straightforward apart from one point at which the footpath just disappeared into random marshland. But following the GPS arrow and ditch-jumping got us to where we were supposed to be. Eventually.
Treacle did her usual stick-carrying thing until about two-thirds of the way round when we walked through a turnip field. Much as she loves carrying a stick, it turns out that sticks are just rubbish when compared to turnips. She carried her turnip all the way back to the car.
The walk was possibly a bit too much for Sid; he got carried quite a bit of the way too.

Geocache-wise it was an odd route. Some finds were trickier than others. One involved a tree climb; one gave me a welly full of river water. I’m not complaining at all; nowadays fewer and fewer people are hiding series of caches. But I would have put out more caches on that route (particularly on the stretch where the footpath went iffy).

I took a few photos as we walked. I do that. Usually we’d go on to a pub for a pint or two after the walk, but time was pushing on. We said our goodbyes and came home. We narrowly beat "Daddy’s Little Angel TM" home.
She was excited to see her dogs, then she and "er indoors TM" vanished off as they do. I popped down the road where a bouncer had appeared (it’s a Munzee thing) then I foraged for my dinner. I’ve found that I have greatest success foraging for dinner when I forage up the road at the KFC. I got a mighty bucket for one, and a couple of extra crispy strips (for the dogs).
I scoffed dinner whilst watching a film on Netflix. “Suburbicon” was odd… I watched it with a sense of “what was that all about?
I did some washing, I hung out laundry, I watched a very odd episode of “Flowers” then watched the first episode of “Schitts Creek”. Starring him out of “American Pie” it seems quite entertaining.

I could have been at a works booze-up this evening. I could have been at a friend’s party. But I’ve got an early start tomorrow…

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