I got up, fed laundry to the washing machine, made toast and
had a look at the Internet. I had an email from the nice lady at Natural
England. She had refused permission for me to hide geocaches in Orlestone Woods
because it is a site of special scientific interest (SSSI). I asked her
what an SSSI is all about, but she seemed utterly unable to answer. She
couldn’t deny that it is demonstrably quite acceptable for the scouts to
ransack the place to build camps and shelters, or that there is no problem with
the local chavs zooming round on their motorbikes destroying the undergrowth.
Similarly the Forestry England people fly round the tracks in their vehicles
doing untold damage to the place. Commercial companies come along and chop down
the trees indiscriminately.
But I can’t stick a film pot under a rock there?
I did see that Gordon had created a series of puzzle
geocaches not too far away. As I scoffed toast I puzzled over them. Within an
hour I had either solved them or figured out how to solve them; those unsolved
will keep me out of mischief over the next few days.
We got the leads onto the wolf-pack and took them out. "er indoors TM"
was keen to finish getting the geocaches along her stretch of the Greensand Way
sorted. Being a linear route makes things particularly tricky, but having
walked up from Ham Street to a randomly selected half-way point (and back
again) on Friday, we walked from down from Kingsnorth to that randomly
selected point (and back again) today. It was as well we did go there
and back again on both instances; the Greensand Way as marked on Ordnance
Survey maps is at odds with reality. It would seem to have been diverted
following the building of the A2070 thirty years ago, but the maps don’t seem
to have been updated. We felt it better to follow the Greensand Way as it is
signposted rather than as it appears on Ordnance Survey maps. Not everyone uses
Ordnance Survey maps, and once the geocache series goes live (in a little
while) there will be those who will be only too quick to find fault.
We had a good walk; but whilst the route was very well
marked and clear to follow, for a formally recognised national long-distance
path the stretch we’ve been working on doesn’t seem to be walked that often.
There was one bit where the path goes past someone’s house where we might have
issues – there was a home-made sign about the dangers of coronavirus and a
warning of naturists. I was looking forward to the photos to come until we met
the chap who’d posted them. We commented on what a pretty garden he had; he
didn’t actually say “f… off fatso” but that was his sentiment.
I took a few photos as we walked. Once
home we had a rather pleasant little afternoon sitting in the garden. Reading
my Kindle, drinking Lithuanian lager, eating Spanish crisps, occasionally barking
at the neighbours, having a little doze. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
I solved a geo-word-search, then "er indoors TM"
boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we scoffed whilst watching an episode
of “Taskmaster”. I set the washing machine loose on my smalls, then
started on geo-jigsaws.
I wonder if my undercrackers will be scrubbed by bed time…
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